When composting, it is suggested to have a mix of green and brown. Green grass clippings having more nitrogen than the old dead brown leaves. It maybe possible that decade old compost is lower in nitrogen. Hold your nose. Cow manure may give you greater yield.
@@socialexperimentgaming4808 I think green grass clippings will go along way to improve things. Human waste? Like say urine? Maybe it will work I kind of wonder about the salts.
Nanny states regulations: Only if you have a special licence can you aquire "dangerous" products and make usefull things with them. Sounds more like industry dosen't want new competition, lobbys polititians to invent laws that raise the barrier limiting new entrants to the market. Ohh I mean to protect people from themselves.
@@magicponyrides so, nanny state regulation resigned to protect you ends up stopping you from aquiring useful products used to make other products people use. Industry has a habit of writing this kind of legislation for polititians. Too often, new regulation end up effectively limit competition in the market under the guise of safety.
@@kreynolds1123 You're not gonna compete with the chemical industry by using dung. There's a reason no modern country does it anymore and it's not just lobbying. The overwhelming majority of fertilizer is produced by the haber-bosch process (to make NH3 from literal thin air) and the ostwald process (to turn NH3 into nitric acid and thus nitrates). This is faaaaaar faster and more efficient. Getting the KNO3 from dung is not worth it at all anymore, it's better to use the dung as a fertilizer right away so at least you don't waste the other fertilizing produces (such as potassium which you would waste)
@@evoluxman9935 my rant was about the difficulties for amature chemist created by regulators who are bought by trade industry, and lobbied to create road blocks to experimentors because we might hurt ourselfs is the definition of a nanny state.
Hi recently i've obtain sample of bacterial product for agricultural use, they said it consist many of useful bacteria, can be use for anything including fermentation and nitrification, i wonder if nitrification could happen then it one more step from nitric acid? Then today i test my urine in bottle hope bacterial will "eat" my urine and convert them into nitrite thus nitric acid, what do you think?
What if you started with potassium nitrate would you only have to do it once? If you want to make nitric acid there's a good rsupy in the US Army Inpevisd munitions handbook.
I bought 2 x 500g containers of potassium nitrate a couple of years ago from AusChem. Didnt have any problems getting it. I tried to get rid of some stumps in my yard with it. Didnt seem to work. I wonder if I should have powdered the beads first?
This was a really cool proof of concept! Very, very awesome of you to upload! Do you think this would work with chlorophyll? I imagine extracting with ethanol or acetone straight from the grass clipping, evaporate, then apply your method on reasonably pure chlorophyll, which if it works, should yield much more nitrates
Couple of things it would help if u actualy composted u have to mix an air rate to compost and itll give off heat as the micro orgnisoms break it down. The way ur doing it takes over 100 years to break it all the way down. Compared to 6 months to a year when done properly. Also some urea or urine would proberly help and finally i suggest using a larger amount of material then boiling the water down b4 u do electrosys
Yes this was the Method of extracting Nitrates in the 18th century and Cody from Cody lab did this. In Quebec Potassium Nitrate at least in Quebec is Illegal the only exception is Magnesium Nitrate. Some local suppliers on ebay may sell you KNO3. But you do it with electrolysis which is an interesting procedure.
a very good video. Thank you for your hard work. :) I will try the same concept like you did, but can i make this with urea instead of compost or will the yield with compost better? Sorry for the stupid question im a laywoman. :/
Not quite, since KCl and CaCO3 don't contain nitrate either. To convert urea into nitrate, you'll need some source of nitrifying bacteria, and you'll need to let them do their thing with good aeration for a while (depending on how much urea you have, this may take months). It's much simpler to start with a source that already has nitrates in it than it is to start with urea. Additionally, the method in this video basically didn't even work to make measurable quantities of nitric acid, so why try it in the first place?
@@ScrapScience Thats a good reason to don't try this in the first place, but i want to find another ways to get on products. So i want to try to isolate the nitrogen from urea with electrolysis and introduce it in NaOH or maybe in H2O2 to make nitric acid, so are my thoughts. Im happy for every help.
Are you looking to obtain nitric acid specifically? First, electrolysis of urea to generate nitrogen gas is a rather difficult reaction to pull off. Additionally, introducing nitrogen to NaOH or H2O2 will not give you a reaction, due to nitrogen's extremely inert nature. If you're really set on converting urea into nitric acid, the best way is first turning it into ammonia (check this video: ruclips.net/video/0-jJ5QF-EVE/видео.htmlsi=IQUCoS5UMw0zhUQZ ), before feeding your ammonia through the Ostwald process to convert it into nitric acid (again, you'll have to look elsewhere for information on this). If you don't have the necessary catalysts and reaction conditions for the Ostwald process, you can also convert your ammonia to nitrate by an electrolytic method (I made a video on this here: ruclips.net/video/AbrmHN5wOY8/видео.htmlsi=zyySTBWQJ1b8bHNM ), but this will require some investigation to make it an adequate technique for making more than a gram.
this looks like a ton of work, for a very little eyelid wouldn't it be much easier to put together a small birklend idyed process chamber? and just pull nitrates from the air?
Yep! Definitely. This was just an experiment to see how effective/difficult this route would be. A Birkeland-Eyde reactor is a much better use of your time if your goal is to make reasonable quantities of nitrate.
@@ScrapScience hey sense i got a hold of you, i am trying to setup a simple chem lab, and i want to do some distillations, now did some water distillations to get clean water for chemistry and it rampt up our power bill, what would you recommend as a chep/free source of heat?
Distilling water to get pure stuff is a very expensive way to do it, regardless of what you use for the heat source. The best way to get pure water is to buy it (normally sold as 'deionised water'), as this is much cheaper than performing distillation yourself. Even better is buying a reverse osmosis purifier to convert tap water into the stuff you need.
Dear Harry how are you. I hope you are doing fine in your home country. Iove your videos and I benefited from thed greatly. I am a teacher here in Kenya. Harry I want to ask you a question; is it possible to use welding electrodes, after scrubbing off the flux? They are made of mixed alloys
Could you use something like Sodium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, or Potassium Nitrate plant fertlizer in place of the compost liquid in this process? Also For the Sulfuric Acid could you use something like Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate Powder? Also can you do this process with something like Super Phosphate fertlizer to make Phosphoric Acid?
For your first question, yes, I have a video about this as well. It doesn't work very well though, since nitric acid is not very stable under direct electrolysis. For your second question, I have a video on that too. Since copper is less reactive than hydrogen, you can do this in an undivided cell. For your third question, I would assume so, but I haven't tried it.
I feel like most of your losses were from the clay pot reacting and possibly evaporating or decomposing. It would probably have better yield if you just got the main nitrates in salt form and did more crystal purification. Then do acid exchange distillation or the electro method afterwards to limit the side reaction loss.
Skip the electrolysis entirely, purify the nitrate compounds via crystallization and then do acid exchange. That would be my best guess on how to keep the yields high.
heres an idea (though it works better with a catalyst) 1 get some compost or decomposing matter or urine 2 take the vapors and heat them (with oxygen) 4 it's catalyst time 5 have the vapors mix with water 6 use paper soaked in wood ash paste to capture any remaining fumes (these will also form nitrates) 7 if possible make it a closed system so fumes and ammonia don't escape another possibility is 1 have a heat resistant glass dome 2 make a small jacobs ladder arc 3 put some paper soaked in wood-ash paste in there far enough away from the arc to not catch fire 4 pump the air through a filter leading to a second dome with a small nonreactive tray of water 5 add a third dome with sulfur that's ready to be ignited 6 once done with the first dome ignite the sulfur in the third dome while directing the vapors to the second one 7 watch the reaction in the second dome while laughing that you will have crude nitric and sulfuric acid 8 once you are done with it all simply remove the domes (in a fume hood or outside with a fan) and harvest your liquid gold (please don't take gold literally - if you can't take jokes transmutation is not a thing without a bunch of equipment and we can only make small amounts of certain isotopes) and use it for whatever (also take the wood-ash paste paper because the ash will probably contain nitrates) hope this idea is good oh yeah once again please make this a closed system so fumes don't escape
hey scrap science i have a question i hope you will have time to reply! i saw some videos about gardeners making compost tea and then bubbling air through it and then they use it as fertilizer. in theory they are turning NH3 into NO3 using bacteria, i also seen alot of videos about sewer water treatment thye also bubble air through it. and also in cody's lab video about niter bed where he pees on straw bed inside a tarp something similar should happen. i was wondering what do you think about that? can a simple air pump in a bucket with compost tea work as a nitrate source? if it works and the nitrates can be purified then it could mean a cheap source of nitric acid! im really excited about this and i wanted to know what you think about it! maybe even make a video trying it?
Yeah, I’ve also looked into similar stuff a while ago (nitre beds I believe they’re called). In fact, most people seem to do without an air pump, as a properly aerated bed doesn’t seem to require it. Sadly, the whole process of nitrification takes something like at least 6 months (possibly over a year) to get a decent quantity of nitrates, hence why I haven’t had a go at this yet. It’s definitely a plan for a video in the far off future, but I currently don’t have the time (or the space), despite how interesting the process is. I am, however, actually currently working on another video right now which involves a more direct (and much faster) oxidation of ammonia to nitrate. If it works, the video should hopefully be up in a couple of months. If it doesn’t work, I might eventually move on to making a nitre bed, or possibly a Birkeland Eyde reactor.
@@ScrapScience nice!! that sounds really interesting! i also saw niter bed cody's lab made and it took about a year so its not realyl attractive option. but the videos i saw about compost tea which is just a bucket with a bit of compost and alot of water and an airpump say it only takes a day or so! do you think it could be true that the airpump in a water bucket with compost can be a faster version of niter bed that takes a day instead of a year?
I’d very much doubt it to be true, as the nitrifying bacteria definitely can’t work that fast, and oxygen from the air alone cannot oxidise ammonia to nitrate. With that in mind, I don’t know how an air pump would speed up the nitrifying process or cause incredibly fast oxidation, but I could be wrong. If it works, it works, but oxidation of ammonia to nitrate is something that quite a lot of research has gone into, so a simple solution like an air pump through compost working in a day is probably too good to be true.
Some have found that a little electricity through the soil can sometimes help plants grow. I wonder if ammonia is being generated in the soil, stimulating growth in plants. Electric horticulture.
You could plug the hole with silicone rubber, that’s what I’ve done and it’s worked pretty well. Otherwise you could set up the two half cells in separate containers and connect then with a damp paper towel to act as the diaphragm, though the current (and speed) of your cell would be reduced a lot.
Most common metals (and also graphite) can be used as a cathode (though I'd probably avoid aluminium), the result is no different between using different metals, whether it be iron, copper, nickel, stainless steel, graphite, etc. The anode is the only electrode where the type of conductive material really matters.
I plugged the hole with some silicone sealant to stop it from leaking. You're right in the fact that using it with the hole in the bottom would stop the process from working
I found a couple of old patents regarding similar electrochemical processes which used clay pots as semi-permeable membranes, and they seemed to get good results in terms of solution separation. There are also a couple of others on youtube who have used them for other electromigration purposes. As far as I've looked, I haven't found anything else which works as well as a clay pot membrane, so it's really lucky how cheap they are.
I thought this was an interesting experiment. Just curious, were you trying to recreate Albert Nodon's system of nitric acid production? If you're yield is disappointing one difference between his and your process is that Nodon used an entire swamp as his nitrate source! I feel like this method is definitely going to require a lot of starting soil to produce any useful quantity of nitrates.
Stainless steel is very susceptible to corrosion under anodic conditions in a non-basic solution. It would work perfectly fine as a cathode but as an anode (in this case at least), it would introduce chromium/iron contamination into the product, assuming it worked at all.
No. The nitric acid required for the nitration of cellulose needs to be much more concentrated (near azeotropic at least). In theory, you might be able to generate enough acid by this process, and then fractionally distil to get the required concentration, but it would be an inefficient and VERY lengthy process.
I think if I remember correctly Peanut plants can fix nitrogen into the soil. I wonder If you could do some processing to the soil that a peanut plant inhabited and then electrolyze it to make nitric acid. I’ll have to do some research on this. I have a peanut plant so I could conduct my own experiments.
Yeah, all legumes (of which, peanuts are a type of) act as excellent homes for nitrogen fixing soil bacteria. I'm not sure how applicable it is in terms of making reasonable quantities of nitrate, but please let me know if you ever get anywhere with it.
Yeah, I'm always hesitant to use my platinum electrode for things. It seems risky to use platinum for a process that may or may not destroy it. As far as I know, graphite electrodes have also been used to extract nitric acid from nitrate-rich soil. From a bit of research I've done, you should check out the following link: www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/the_manufacture_of_chemicals_by_electrolysis.pdf On page 30 of the book (or page 42 of the pdf), the author goes into a method of extracting nitric acid with a carbon anode in a clay pot which is imbedded in the ground (and with stainless steel electrodes inserted in the surrounding soil). Slowly electrolysing the setup apparently gives nitric acid without disrupting the nitrifying bacteria from doing their thing.
@@ScrapScience I could possibly test whether it is safe to use platinum by using a tiny bit of platinum wire before using my platinized titanium electrode. Unfortunately, I just ran out of carbon electrodes, so I’ll have to order some more. I think I’ll stick to my carbon for this one. Also I think this process was invented by Albert Nodon. I like the process you suggested. Only problem is where am going to get coke( as in fuel coke).
That's probably the best idea for testing the wear rate of platinum. However, also note that the rate of corrosion is often different for solid and plated platinum surfaces. Though the difference isn't usually something to worry about. If you do transition to using your platinized titanium, initially only dipping half of the electrode surface in the solution might be a good way to start, so that you don't ruin your whole electrode if it does fail. As for the coke it talks about, it's only referring to how they used to make carbon electrodes (since the book is over 100 years old). It's unneccesary if you can get hold of carbon electrodes directly.
I suspect the electrolytic process gets quite poor yields. It seems to me that if you wish to know just how much nitrate you're able to extract, you should seek to isolate the calcium nitrate and quantify that.
and i checked if the chalk i have is made up of CaCO3 or not so i made chalk powder and then dipped it in Dil H2SO4 it did some fizzing , so is it CaCO3 or gypsum
I was thinking crushed eggshells. Chicken eggshells are made up of 95% calcium carbonate by weight and the remaining material is primarily organic matrix. Eggshell membrane is primarily composed of fibrous proteins that can be filtered out. Reasonably high purity to start with and it's a costless waste product.
Read up on how to create a nitre bed. Get some farm animals like some chickens and use straw for their bedding you end up with all kinds of nitrogen forming whether you like it or not but specifically to get a control them out read up on how to make a night or bed and you use your urine. It takes a long time but once you get a good bed going you'll get a lot of it
I've had a few problems with youtube needlessly flagging comments as spam, it's possible that your comment was automatically removed by mistake, sorry about that. The only comments I deliberately delete are ones trying to convince me that drinking chlorine dioxide cures cancer. What was your question? I'm always happy to respond.
When composting, it is suggested to have a mix of green and brown. Green grass clippings having more nitrogen than the old dead brown leaves. It maybe possible that decade old compost is lower in nitrogen. Hold your nose. Cow manure may give you greater yield.
would using the clippings and filtering human fluid discharge increase the nitrate content? Maybe even achieving a nitrate content target?
@@socialexperimentgaming4808 I think green grass clippings will go along way to improve things.
Human waste? Like say urine? Maybe it will work I kind of wonder about the salts.
Nanny states regulations: Only if you have a special licence can you aquire "dangerous" products and make usefull things with them.
Sounds more like industry dosen't want new competition, lobbys polititians to invent laws that raise the barrier limiting new entrants to the market. Ohh I mean to protect people from themselves.
Bro, they just don't want people making fuel-air bombs with nitrate.
@@magicponyrides so, nanny state regulation resigned to protect you ends up stopping you from aquiring useful products used to make other products people use.
Industry has a habit of writing this kind of legislation for polititians. Too often, new regulation end up effectively limit competition in the market under the guise of safety.
@@kreynolds1123 You're not gonna compete with the chemical industry by using dung. There's a reason no modern country does it anymore and it's not just lobbying. The overwhelming majority of fertilizer is produced by the haber-bosch process (to make NH3 from literal thin air) and the ostwald process (to turn NH3 into nitric acid and thus nitrates). This is faaaaaar faster and more efficient. Getting the KNO3 from dung is not worth it at all anymore, it's better to use the dung as a fertilizer right away so at least you don't waste the other fertilizing produces (such as potassium which you would waste)
@@evoluxman9935 my rant was about the difficulties for amature chemist created by regulators who are bought by trade industry, and lobbied to create road blocks to experimentors because we might hurt ourselfs is the definition of a nanny state.
you can buy calcium nitrate from bunnings as a hydrangea pinker. the brand is called manutec
You could use electrical arcs to produce nitrogen oxides, and then bubble those through water to make nitric acid
That’s exactly what I’ve got planned for the second attempt, just need to buy a neon sign transformer
@@ScrapScience Can't wait to see it! Love the channel!
@@metalheadguy2109 Yeah, I don't think it's going to work very well.
Yields using that method are extremely poor.
@@neutronpcxt372 mine ran for 48 hours straight and i got 400ml of 98% nitric acid
@@mikahandony1562 98%?
Don't you mean 68%?
Unless you mean anhydrous nitric acid?
Hi recently i've obtain sample of bacterial product for agricultural use, they said it consist many of useful bacteria, can be use for anything including fermentation and nitrification, i wonder if nitrification could happen then it one more step from nitric acid? Then today i test my urine in bottle hope bacterial will "eat" my urine and convert them into nitrite thus nitric acid, what do you think?
This reminds me the sythesis proplems my orgo prof gave us where we had to make a compound from basically acetylene and dirt.
What if you started with potassium nitrate would you only have to do it once?
If you want to make nitric acid there's a good rsupy in the US Army Inpevisd munitions handbook.
I bought 2 x 500g containers of potassium nitrate a couple of years ago from AusChem. Didnt have any problems getting it. I tried to get rid of some stumps in my yard with it. Didnt seem to work. I wonder if I should have powdered the beads first?
Potassium nitrate is not for that purpos
Koukou Zee Yes it is
This was a really cool proof of concept! Very, very awesome of you to upload!
Do you think this would work with chlorophyll? I imagine extracting with ethanol or acetone straight from the grass clipping, evaporate, then apply your method on reasonably pure chlorophyll, which if it works, should yield much more nitrates
Couple of things it would help if u actualy composted u have to mix an air rate to compost and itll give off heat as the micro orgnisoms break it down. The way ur doing it takes over 100 years to break it all the way down. Compared to 6 months to a year when done properly. Also some urea or urine would proberly help and finally i suggest using a larger amount of material then boiling the water down b4 u do electrosys
13:11 is the sound of ASIO downloading the contents of your hard drive
brilliant video exactly what i wanted to do but i learned so many things i didnt know!!! ty!
Yes this was the Method of extracting Nitrates in the 18th century and Cody from Cody lab did this. In Quebec Potassium Nitrate at least in Quebec is Illegal the only exception is Magnesium Nitrate. Some local suppliers on ebay may sell you KNO3. But you do it with electrolysis which is an interesting procedure.
a very good video. Thank you for your hard work. :)
I will try the same concept like you did, but can i make this with urea instead of compost or will the yield with compost better? Sorry for the stupid question im a laywoman. :/
Urea alone will not allow you to make nitric acid, I'm afraid. That is, unless you convert it to a nitrate salt first.
@@ScrapScience thank you for your answer, you mean i can mix it with KCl or CaCO3?
Not quite, since KCl and CaCO3 don't contain nitrate either. To convert urea into nitrate, you'll need some source of nitrifying bacteria, and you'll need to let them do their thing with good aeration for a while (depending on how much urea you have, this may take months). It's much simpler to start with a source that already has nitrates in it than it is to start with urea.
Additionally, the method in this video basically didn't even work to make measurable quantities of nitric acid, so why try it in the first place?
@@ScrapScience Thats a good reason to don't try this in the first place, but i want to find another ways to get on products. So i want to try to isolate the nitrogen from urea with electrolysis and introduce it in NaOH or maybe in H2O2 to make nitric acid, so are my thoughts. Im happy for every help.
Are you looking to obtain nitric acid specifically? First, electrolysis of urea to generate nitrogen gas is a rather difficult reaction to pull off. Additionally, introducing nitrogen to NaOH or H2O2 will not give you a reaction, due to nitrogen's extremely inert nature.
If you're really set on converting urea into nitric acid, the best way is first turning it into ammonia (check this video: ruclips.net/video/0-jJ5QF-EVE/видео.htmlsi=IQUCoS5UMw0zhUQZ ), before feeding your ammonia through the Ostwald process to convert it into nitric acid (again, you'll have to look elsewhere for information on this).
If you don't have the necessary catalysts and reaction conditions for the Ostwald process, you can also convert your ammonia to nitrate by an electrolytic method (I made a video on this here: ruclips.net/video/AbrmHN5wOY8/видео.htmlsi=zyySTBWQJ1b8bHNM ), but this will require some investigation to make it an adequate technique for making more than a gram.
this looks like a ton of work, for a very little eyelid wouldn't it be much easier to put together a small birklend idyed process chamber? and just pull nitrates from the air?
Yep! Definitely.
This was just an experiment to see how effective/difficult this route would be. A Birkeland-Eyde reactor is a much better use of your time if your goal is to make reasonable quantities of nitrate.
@@ScrapScience hey sense i got a hold of you, i am trying to setup a simple chem lab, and i want to do some distillations, now did some water distillations to get clean water for chemistry and it rampt up our power bill, what would you recommend as a chep/free source of heat?
Distilling water to get pure stuff is a very expensive way to do it, regardless of what you use for the heat source.
The best way to get pure water is to buy it (normally sold as 'deionised water'), as this is much cheaper than performing distillation yourself. Even better is buying a reverse osmosis purifier to convert tap water into the stuff you need.
Dear Harry how are you. I hope you are doing fine in your home country. Iove your videos and I benefited from thed greatly.
I am a teacher here in Kenya. Harry I want to ask you a question; is it possible to use welding electrodes, after scrubbing off the flux? They are made of mixed alloys
Most metals will work as a cathode material here, but the anode must be graphite/carbon. I'm afraid those welding electrodes won't work as an anode.
@@ScrapScience thanks Harry andvI hope you do well on uour exams. You are member of the family, because ee know so much about your life
Thanks
Could you use something like Sodium Nitrate, Calcium Nitrate, or Potassium Nitrate plant fertlizer in place of the compost liquid in this process?
Also For the Sulfuric Acid could you use something like Copper Sulfate Pentahydrate Powder?
Also can you do this process with something like Super Phosphate fertlizer to make Phosphoric Acid?
For your first question, yes, I have a video about this as well. It doesn't work very well though, since nitric acid is not very stable under direct electrolysis.
For your second question, I have a video on that too. Since copper is less reactive than hydrogen, you can do this in an undivided cell.
For your third question, I would assume so, but I haven't tried it.
I feel like most of your losses were from the clay pot reacting and possibly evaporating or decomposing. It would probably have better yield if you just got the main nitrates in salt form and did more crystal purification. Then do acid exchange distillation or the electro method afterwards to limit the side reaction loss.
Skip the electrolysis entirely, purify the nitrate compounds via crystallization and then do acid exchange. That would be my best guess on how to keep the yields high.
Just found your channel - Great content! Keep making videos :-)
_Subscribed w/ notifications_
heres an idea (though it works better with a catalyst) 1 get some compost or decomposing matter or urine 2 take the vapors and heat them (with oxygen) 4 it's catalyst time 5 have the vapors mix with water 6 use paper soaked in wood ash paste to capture any remaining fumes (these will also form nitrates) 7 if possible make it a closed system so fumes and ammonia don't escape
another possibility is 1 have a heat resistant glass dome 2 make a small jacobs ladder arc 3 put some paper soaked in wood-ash paste in there far enough away from the arc to not catch fire 4 pump the air through a filter leading to a second dome with a small nonreactive tray of water 5 add a third dome with sulfur that's ready to be ignited 6 once done with the first dome ignite the sulfur in the third dome while directing the vapors to the second one 7 watch the reaction in the second dome while laughing that you will have crude nitric and sulfuric acid 8 once you are done with it all simply remove the domes (in a fume hood or outside with a fan) and harvest your liquid gold (please don't take gold literally - if you can't take jokes transmutation is not a thing without a bunch of equipment and we can only make small amounts of certain isotopes) and use it for whatever (also take the wood-ash paste paper because the ash will probably contain nitrates) hope this idea is good oh yeah once again please make this a closed system so fumes don't escape
Wood ash is a great source of pot ash(potassium nitrates)
hey scrap science i have a question i hope you will have time to reply!
i saw some videos about gardeners making compost tea and then bubbling air through it and then they use it as fertilizer.
in theory they are turning NH3 into NO3 using bacteria, i also seen alot of videos about sewer water treatment thye also bubble air through it.
and also in cody's lab video about niter bed where he pees on straw bed inside a tarp something similar should happen.
i was wondering what do you think about that? can a simple air pump in a bucket with compost tea work as a nitrate source?
if it works and the nitrates can be purified then it could mean a cheap source of nitric acid!
im really excited about this and i wanted to know what you think about it! maybe even make a video trying it?
Yeah, I’ve also looked into similar stuff a while ago (nitre beds I believe they’re called). In fact, most people seem to do without an air pump, as a properly aerated bed doesn’t seem to require it. Sadly, the whole process of nitrification takes something like at least 6 months (possibly over a year) to get a decent quantity of nitrates, hence why I haven’t had a go at this yet.
It’s definitely a plan for a video in the far off future, but I currently don’t have the time (or the space), despite how interesting the process is.
I am, however, actually currently working on another video right now which involves a more direct (and much faster) oxidation of ammonia to nitrate. If it works, the video should hopefully be up in a couple of months. If it doesn’t work, I might eventually move on to making a nitre bed, or possibly a Birkeland Eyde reactor.
@@ScrapScience nice!! that sounds really interesting! i also saw niter bed cody's lab made and it took about a year so its not realyl attractive option.
but the videos i saw about compost tea which is just a bucket with a bit of compost and alot of water and an airpump say it only takes a day or so!
do you think it could be true that the airpump in a water bucket with compost can be a faster version of niter bed that takes a day instead of a year?
I’d very much doubt it to be true, as the nitrifying bacteria definitely can’t work that fast, and oxygen from the air alone cannot oxidise ammonia to nitrate. With that in mind, I don’t know how an air pump would speed up the nitrifying process or cause incredibly fast oxidation, but I could be wrong. If it works, it works, but oxidation of ammonia to nitrate is something that quite a lot of research has gone into, so a simple solution like an air pump through compost working in a day is probably too good to be true.
@@ScrapScience thank you for replying im really interested in everythnig nitric acid related!
Some have found that a little electricity through the soil can sometimes help plants grow. I wonder if ammonia is being generated in the soil, stimulating growth in plants. Electric horticulture.
Interesting, do you have some some texts about the topic?
That's very interesting idea and worthy of testing. Also effects of electric and magnetic fields on vegetation grows can be studied too.
@@recarras apparently a very old article www.nature.com/articles/138070c0
or maybe you can start with some blogs.
blog.electricfertilizer.com/#/
Are there other alternatives to a flower pot? because I have been unsuccessful in finding ones without holes in the bottom.
You could plug the hole with silicone rubber, that’s what I’ve done and it’s worked pretty well. Otherwise you could set up the two half cells in separate containers and connect then with a damp paper towel to act as the diaphragm, though the current (and speed) of your cell would be reduced a lot.
Thank you very much for your help
@@ScrapScience can you do demo for that please!
YOU are GREAT
thank you so much
With all the ammonia you think you have, you might try making nitric acid via the Oswald process. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostwald_process
thank you
Scrap Science is it possible to use iron rod for the cathode and what is the effect?
Most common metals (and also graphite) can be used as a cathode (though I'd probably avoid aluminium), the result is no different between using different metals, whether it be iron, copper, nickel, stainless steel, graphite, etc.
The anode is the only electrode where the type of conductive material really matters.
@@ScrapScience Thank for answering my question. more power Sir.
Sterling work!
but i dont understand the pot acts as a semi permeable membrane? didnt the large claypot have a hole in the bottom?
I plugged the hole with some silicone sealant to stop it from leaking. You're right in the fact that using it with the hole in the bottom would stop the process from working
@@ScrapScience how did you know that clay pot is semi permeable membrane? im curious i didnt know that
I found a couple of old patents regarding similar electrochemical processes which used clay pots as semi-permeable membranes, and they seemed to get good results in terms of solution separation. There are also a couple of others on youtube who have used them for other electromigration purposes.
As far as I've looked, I haven't found anything else which works as well as a clay pot membrane, so it's really lucky how cheap they are.
@@ScrapScience oh thats good to know ! thank you for taking the time to reply i didnt know about it!
I thought this was an interesting experiment. Just curious, were you trying to recreate Albert Nodon's system of nitric acid production? If you're yield is disappointing one difference between his and your process is that Nodon used an entire swamp as his nitrate source! I feel like this method is definitely going to require a lot of starting soil to produce any useful quantity of nitrates.
I heard of this process. Since my town of New Orleans used to be a swamp, I’m pretty sure the soil contains a lot of calcium nitrate.
Sir can you please demo in your future video on how to make potassium nitrate from Joseph LeConte method!
How about an LG tide? Off one of the Great Lakes, and boy does it smell!
great video scrap science, messed with my name and now I am too in chemistry video making :)
have you tried stainless steel electrodes? maybe better?
Stainless steel is very susceptible to corrosion under anodic conditions in a non-basic solution. It would work perfectly fine as a cathode but as an anode (in this case at least), it would introduce chromium/iron contamination into the product, assuming it worked at all.
You can buy some nitrate salts off eBay but I'm not sure about the legalities of it
instead he could just piss into a bowl and use it, its legal all over the world ;)
can you make nitrocellulose from this nitric acid ?
No. The nitric acid required for the nitration of cellulose needs to be much more concentrated (near azeotropic at least). In theory, you might be able to generate enough acid by this process, and then fractionally distil to get the required concentration, but it would be an inefficient and VERY lengthy process.
I think if I remember correctly Peanut plants can fix nitrogen into the soil. I wonder If you could do some processing to the soil that a peanut plant inhabited and then electrolyze it to make nitric acid. I’ll have to do some research on this. I have a peanut plant so I could conduct my own experiments.
Yeah, all legumes (of which, peanuts are a type of) act as excellent homes for nitrogen fixing soil bacteria. I'm not sure how applicable it is in terms of making reasonable quantities of nitrate, but please let me know if you ever get anywhere with it.
@@ScrapScience I am kinda worried about the dilute nitric acid possibly damaging my platinized electrode.
Yeah, I'm always hesitant to use my platinum electrode for things. It seems risky to use platinum for a process that may or may not destroy it.
As far as I know, graphite electrodes have also been used to extract nitric acid from nitrate-rich soil. From a bit of research I've done, you should check out the following link:
www.sciencemadness.org/library/books/the_manufacture_of_chemicals_by_electrolysis.pdf
On page 30 of the book (or page 42 of the pdf), the author goes into a method of extracting nitric acid with a carbon anode in a clay pot which is imbedded in the ground (and with stainless steel electrodes inserted in the surrounding soil). Slowly electrolysing the setup apparently gives nitric acid without disrupting the nitrifying bacteria from doing their thing.
@@ScrapScience I could possibly test whether it is safe to use platinum by using a tiny bit of platinum wire before using my platinized titanium electrode. Unfortunately, I just ran out of carbon electrodes, so I’ll have to order some more. I think I’ll stick to my carbon for this one.
Also I think this process was invented by Albert Nodon.
I like the process you suggested. Only problem is where am going to get coke( as in fuel coke).
That's probably the best idea for testing the wear rate of platinum. However, also note that the rate of corrosion is often different for solid and plated platinum surfaces. Though the difference isn't usually something to worry about.
If you do transition to using your platinized titanium, initially only dipping half of the electrode surface in the solution might be a good way to start, so that you don't ruin your whole electrode if it does fail.
As for the coke it talks about, it's only referring to how they used to make carbon electrodes (since the book is over 100 years old). It's unneccesary if you can get hold of carbon electrodes directly.
I suspect the electrolytic process gets quite poor yields. It seems to me that if you wish to know just how much nitrate you're able to extract, you should seek to isolate the calcium nitrate and quantify that.
Right, if there's nitrate present it shouldn't be difficult to isolate without electrolysis.
Instead of making CaCO3 U can break a chalk, it have pretty high % of CaCO3
and i checked if the chalk i have is made up of CaCO3 or not so i made chalk powder and then dipped it in Dil H2SO4 it did some fizzing , so is it CaCO3 or gypsum
I was thinking crushed eggshells. Chicken eggshells are made up of 95% calcium carbonate by weight and the remaining material is primarily organic matrix. Eggshell membrane is primarily composed of fibrous proteins that can be filtered out.
Reasonably high purity to start with and it's a costless waste product.
chicken manure would be your best bet for obtaining nitrates
Nice bro😉😉
Go on
you should have a side channel named Claypot Chemistry
That was way cool.....ALL NATURAL!! so cool
Cody's lab made a special compost called a "Niter bed" and managed to get potassium nitrate from that.
chicken droppings are very high in Nitrogen
You could probably also extract nitrates from urine, but... the smell... would be awful.
Read up on how to create a nitre bed. Get some farm animals like some chickens and use straw for their bedding you end up with all kinds of nitrogen forming whether you like it or not but specifically to get a control them out read up on how to make a night or bed and you use your urine. It takes a long time but once you get a good bed going you'll get a lot of it
why delete my question??
I've had a few problems with youtube needlessly flagging comments as spam, it's possible that your comment was automatically removed by mistake, sorry about that. The only comments I deliberately delete are ones trying to convince me that drinking chlorine dioxide cures cancer.
What was your question? I'm always happy to respond.
Wow.
You don't have access to nitrate fertilisers?
Are they afraid of people making bombs? LOL.
Yep, no nitrate fertiliser for the general population. Australia's pretty strict on anything you can make bombs out of.
@@ScrapScience you can make bombs out of anything. Mixing bleach and windex in a plastic bottle then putting the cap on with make it explode
@@bearcatben4762 some things are considered more destructive than others.
@@julmaj1479 Yeah I guess its all relative
@Whoop!
Start throwing banana peels in your compost . They contain a lot of nitrogen.
Pee on the compost