Hope you guys enjoyed! Here's the parts used for this video: -oil burner transformer: amzn.to/3OtU1jg -air pump: amzn.to/3z2CN6T -gas dispersion tube: amzn.to/3BcQcMv -cooling fan: amzn.to/3cv5SAd
Back in the day I built one of these. I achieved a ring of plasma with microwave oven magnetron magnets; you know, those toroidal ones with a really high curie temperature. I had a stack of two of them in the reaction chamber (which was a glass jar too :D), sitting on the inside of the lid, sealed with silicone, iirc. Between the magnets, in the hole, I had a ring of thin copper wire as close a possible to the size of the hole, as an anode. You can run the wire between the magnets, just flatten it with a hammer as to not have a huge gap between the magnets. I guess you could use the lip of the hole itself as an anode, as the magnets are really conductive. You'd probably have to cool the magnets somehow. The point of the ring is to not have the arc directly heat up the magnets. For a cathode, just a wire with it's tip in the middle of the ring. You can conveniently run the cathode wire through the inlet hose. I also read somewhere that it's more efficient the cooler the output gas is, something to do with an equilibrium reaction between NO and NO2 iirc, so I had the output run through a 1.5l bottle to give it time to cool. The chamber ran really hot 'cause I was pumping like a 100 watts in to it. I don't know the exact figure, but my crappy 555 -based driver was drawing like 150w; I melted a flyback to the carpet one time :D so I'm guessing it was really inefficient. It all ended when I joked with a friend of my dad's that I could make terrible gunpowder with the sodium nitrate I was making from the nitric, and my dad happened to hear. Out of worry of me playing with explosives, he banned the thing. I cried for an hour or two... It was the first project that I was really happy and proud of. At the time I really felt like it was the meaning of my life. It was all I could think about, I even forgot to eat while fiddling with it! I mean, with hindsight, it was the right decision, but come on, if you're gonna ban it, ban it because of the toxic gasses I was filling my bedroom with, or because of the high voltage, or because of the fire risk! I couldn't bare to disassemble the thing for months, so it just sat on the floor for that time. Some day I'm gonna build a version 2.0. I'm also gonna have a scrubber, I've breathed enough NOx and chlorine and HCl and ozone for a lifetime. A little tiny breath of chorine feels like a punch to the nose, and even a tiny concentration gives you a nasty runny nose and a cough, and makes the inside of your nose smell like bleach. Not healthy :D Okay I'm gonna stop rambling now :D
I can definitely relate, my childhood had its share of questionable chemistry too. I remember my first time inhaling chlorine was when I used my mother's plastic kitchen containers as a reaction vessel for generating HHO after promising her wouldn't damage them. Of course I ended up melting the bottom and getting a lungful of chlorine all within an hour. Time to make version 2.0 if you haven't already! I don't know how old you are, but no one gets any younger and that seems like a project worth doing.
Actually that is a cost effective way to make HNO3. I've know about this process but most ppl were using MOTs that are over a 1KW, so it would be too expensive. At 35 watts over 2 days, you only used 1.6KW hours. At 10 cents/KW hour, you only used like 17cents worth of power to make 10ml. Last time I bought nitric with shipping it was like $270 for 10 liters or $27/liter. Your cost was $17/liter, not including your time and baking soda. Not too bad at all!
If you're trying to get nitrite and not nitrate, this is a great and cheap method. Like you said, it's working out to about $0.01 per gram of the sodium salt, not including the electricity to boil off the water. To get pure nitrite, just recrystalize the mixed salts from ethanol. Sodium nitrite will crystallize out.
The epoxy degradation may be attributable to the UV generated by the electrical arc. Standard epoxies don't have UV inhibitors and they are very susceptible to UV damage.
The amount of UV radiation emitted by the arc depends on the strength of the current. In this case, it may not be enough to noticeably degrade the plastic in such a short time. But plastics are very sensitive to ozone. And just a quite noticeable amount of ozone is released in this reactor.
My Mum enjoyed watchinhg this. She was a pharmaceutical chemist and made peoples prescription up before everything came in boxs ready made. When my sister and I left school mum went back to university and trained as an industrial chemist and ended up running the testing labs for a UK manufacturer. (she is 86 now) great video 2x👍
Great informative video on the topic, nice to see you posting again. I've been meaning to make one of these, Nitric acid is difficult to get hold of in the UK (I understand why, regulations changed after a bunch acid attacks) - My best bit of advice would be to look for a free online copy of "Absorption of Nitrous Gases" by H. W. Webb. Published in 1923, it's a bit of a dense read and some of the science is outdated, but for free information on the topic it's the best resource I've found so far. The search function in the book is surprisingly good. - I suspect the damage to the epoxy might be due more to UV or Ozone rather than the NO2, although damp air in the chamber would make a hot nitric environment. Not many materials are going to last long there. Provided the silicone tubing isn't too badly damaged then perhaps cutting some silicone baking trays as disposable gaskets could be an option. - The reaction of Nitrogen and Oxygen to NO is a fast process, the conversion to NO2 is slower and the equilibrium is favoured at lower temperatures. Having a longer (ideally Teflon or other resistant material) tube between the jar and bubbler should improve the conversion of NO to NO2. Back in the day they had a large chamber to allow for this. - When dissolved in water, the NO2 forms Nitric and Nitrous acid. The Nitrous acid decomposes with heat or higher Nitric concentrations to give Nitric acid and NO. Keeping the first bubbler warm might improve yield, or jump starting the first bubbler with a bit of your fuming acid might improve your next run. - Nitrous Acid can be oxidised to Nitric acid by Oxygen, adding a second bubbler (or the second output of the air pump, ideally with a one way valve sold as aquarium supplies) to the absorption chamber would aid in oxidising the nitrous acid. This could be done after running the arc, provided you kept running the second jar to avoid losses. A timer setup on the arc supply might also work, and avoid the need for more plumbing. - I would add an additional scrubber with some form of base, such as Sodium Carbonate, Calcium Hydroxide or similar to get as much yield as possible and reduce Nox emissions. This last scrubber will have a mix of Nitrates and Nitrites though. Too many scrubbers will make your air pump flow rate decrease, so be mindful of that. - I would advise caution with the salt you produced. Nitrites are quite toxic, affecting haemoglobin and oxygen supply. It's nothing compared to NO2 and a poisoning you'd notice, but still something to keep in mind. - The book I mentioned in parts discusses Ozone reacting with NO and other things, this wasn't feasible at the time, but with cheap AliExpress aquarium Ozone modules it might be worth experimenting. There's some stuff on Google Scholar about Ozone turning Nitrites to Nitrates, but it's mainly focused on wastewater treatment. Still worth considering. -Not sure about using magnets, the videos I've seen look good, but it's not my area of expertise. Others have mentioned Magnetrons from microwaves, but old hard drives might be an alternative source that avoids the ceramic containing Beryllium found in old microwaves. - With the cooling fan; perhaps putting a large plastic container over the arc vessel with the fan glued on top and vents cut in the side would work well. It would also prevent anything from shorting the spark coil and help accidentally touching any high voltage. The cooling would be focused on the jar and keeps fingers away from high voltage. - Really looking forward to version 2, I might just have to get up off my arse and make my version 1. Hope the reply wasn't too long.
Hey @ElementalMaker, hope you're ok, been missing your channel and would live to know if you're going to come back. It would be great just to know whats happening.
Man, when I see a new video I get all excited......lol. ... I've been watching you for a long time and it allows me to let my inner science geek out. I'm a retired carpenter and I have no real need to know how to make nitric acid but I still want to know...
great project! at least when handling dilute nitric acid and sulfuric acid try and wear gloves, always better to be safe. Now with fuming nitric acid wearing certain gloves is actually worse than not wearing them. Glad I found your channel
Your fatty hands are a pretty good protective layer and it will just stain you a bit yellow if you clean it off right away. Better than having gloves ignite and getting welded into your skin lmao
In some countries nitric acid is highly regulated. So the only way to get it is to produce it by yourself. And that is how I was getting nitric acid for my needs.
Let's see, what was the acid in grade school that turned your fingers yellow quickly? Yep, I think it was this stuff... I don't have a clue what experiments we were doing back then but I do remember the teacher taking the smoking version after class and diluting it down for the student variety we used for those experiments. Decades later I was working at a dairy where they occasionally poured the concentrated version directly down a floor drain to unclog it. There were flames three foot tall coming out of that floor drain for awhile. Not sure what milk product buildups we're down in that clog to cause such a violent reaction but it was cool to watch! 20 minutes later and that drain was cured.
Great project, fine result. I know you say not to do this 'at home' - but if done elsewhere, I'd surely recommend covering up the outputs from the HV-generator. It's an easy way to improve on a bit risky setup, where lots of things can/will go wrong. Better safe than hurting while dying ;ø)
As a doctor and organic chemist, I definitely need to get something off my chest. For an amateur you make great videos. Plus, you can laugh at yourself, which is what I appreciate most. keep it up 👍
Very nice. A chemist friend and I made some NA years ago. Our setup was in the garage before realizing everything that was bare steel rusted overnight. Also the UV from the arc is probably what degraded that epoxy like that. Most epoxies are not UV stable and I've seen it come out like that after being in a UV-C chamber I have.
Hi and greetings from the UK 🇬🇧 a late happy new year to you and yours, simple question have you forgotten us mortals? 😊 you do know we really enjoy watching 👀 your channel 😉
Hey Tom! Happy new year to you as well. I most definitely haven't forgotten the channel, unfortunately with the 1yr old and new work I've been very short on time. Hoping to get some new stuff in the works posted soon
Over the pandemic lockdowns from April 2020 to May 2021, I built and operated a larger scale B-E reactor that ran almost continuously. It produced 22L of approximately 40% HNO3 that I use for gold recovery/refining.
@@ElementalMaker I have PDF's of 7 old chemistry books from WAAAAY back (early 1930's if I recall correctly). If you're interested, I could either email them to you, or give you download access from my Google Drive.
I use that same brand of drain cleaner for H2SO4. I've done extensive testing and reviewed the SDS - as far as I can tell there are no additives at all and my titrations and density tests put the concentration at 96-98%. I bought several jugs in case it disappears for some reason. Such a great and inexpensive source of clean H2SO4.
Nice generator. This is also by far the best video on this topic out there. I tried making a nitric acid generator last year using a microwave transformer with much less success. I struggled to keep the arc going without melting the copper electrodes.
You can use copper tubing for the air supply and exit, and energize the tubes. That way, they get a bit of cooling, but there is a risk of them burning in the electrical fire, with the air blowing right at the hotspot. The last one I built had the air input as a copper tube, some stainless steel wire as the electrode for that tube, and the other electrode was a tungsten "W" TIG welding electrode, in the exit tube, so the air could leave while tightly surrounding the tungsten.
A microwave transformer will put out WAY too much current and not very much voltage. That's why it wont work too well, the arc just gets way too hot which destroys most of the gases you want and it just turns back into regular air. You could get some succes by limiting the current a lot, but ideally you want a completely different transformer. A neon sign or oil ignition transformer is closer to what you want, a TV flyback may be the best commonly available way though. You basically want a big, but cold arc.
@@benjaminmiller3620 That's more the direction you'd want to go in, yes. Although I'm not sure what type of generator you mean exactly, something like a van de graaf would be very weak for example. As I said, I think a TV flyback (driven by slayer exciter or other single-transistor driver) would be ideal here. The electrode layout is also very impactful of course.
@@Basement-Science I was thinking Wimshurst, and more as an experimental low tech solution, than an optimized one. One could build such a generator with copper age tech!
Before the Haber process was developed, this was actually the main industrial route to making nitric acid: Air was blown through a huge spark array, making a mixture of NO and NO2 - this was further oxidised to convert the NO into more NO2, and finally absorbed into water to make nitric acid. In that last step, the NO2 disproportionates, some being oxidized further to nitric acid, the remainder being reduced back to NO. The latter was of course recycled back into the second oxidation step to make more NO2, enhancing the overall efficiency. This was of course a vast improvement in nitric acid / nitrate production over mining guano deposits, which was a truly disgusting but necessary pastime. But as you correctly point out, it was also an extremely inefficient way of using electricity, since the vast majority of the electrical energy input was wasted as heat. So it was only really viable where power could be cheaply generated, which explains why the first plants were built near to the Norwegian hydroelectric power stations.
Man I might have to hire you to write some script for my videos. That was a great and concise explanation! I tried to explain all that in the video (or at least in filming), but I always ramble and then end up cutting out a ton of stuff during editing.
@@ElementalMaker I can certainly try, if you are serious about that offer. Just give me an idea of what you want to do for forthcoming videos and the kind of information you want to get across. Plus how much detail you want and what you want the maximum video length to be.
Nice demo man. It's always fascinated me that this is a viable route to nitrogen fertilizers from just electricity, air, and basically whatever additional fert reagent you have on hand.
I've watched several of your videos to this point and I enjoy your content. However, I would like to see more documentation of details. In many of your processes, I would feel uncertain in attempting some of these projects myself. thank you
Thank you for the very informative and useful video. I had read about this process on Wikipedia however they did not or could not specify the process clearly.
Hey buddy, Former USMC turned family man. Gotta say, I smell what you're stepping in. Absolutely love the videos. It's hard to find a fellow man who is as fiercely intelligent with a good sense of humor. Anyways, not trying to give you pick up lines cause I don't bark up that tree but stay strong keep the videos coming. Just bought a tombstone welder to copy you. Not gonna do videos trying to one up. Just gonna do those projects. Making nitric acid next to make aqua regia. Doin my own thing too. Best Regards, Dave Malarky
Good to see you back. This setup reminds me very much of the rig I built for silver recovery/refining. Instead of your reaction chamber I have a vacuum flask with an air pump at the vacuum port and the silver dissolving in the flask. All the NO2 is then piped out into multiple flasks to capture as much as possible. Last in line is a gas trap with KOH. Zero smell after final venting. It's shocking how much nitric I can recover and feed back into the first flask eliminating the need to buy more. But I like what you've got going here. Have you noticed any condensation in the bottom of the reaction chamber? I'd expect some NO3 would slowly build up and settle in the bottom.
4:52 i think possibly the bell from a CRT tv could be used as to spread the plasma disk. Take the windings off the plastic part and wrap them around the jar. I might try it lol its just so dangerous to try an manipulate the arc WHILE its running.
i will make use of this thank you good sir. niric acid is hard to get for me and so is sulphuric so making it from KNO3 was off the table. didn't know about this. very informative
If you can't get sulfuric, and this electrochemistry appeals to you you (as it should), you can make sulfuric from electrolysis of copper sulfate (I call it crystal smurf), which is a fun and beautiful process, and much more enjoyable than burning sulfur in air and sucking the fumes through water, like a dirty victorian. It's common enough that a lot of chemistry channels show how to do it.
@@buckstarchaser2376 You can do sulphuric acid, burning sulphur,and passing the SO2 in water don't? Distilling water from sulphuric is more easier than making electrical shenanigans I think...
@@isaacm1929 You would need to distill it either way, I think. I've never done the burning method, but the copper II sulfate electrolysis becomes very useful later for some uses, such as precious metals refining.
You can use a disc magnet from a magnetron and a washer and sone dc high voltage to make the plasma run in circles. Obviously you need to cool the magnet pretty good or it won't last long. For ac high voltage an electromagnet might work which flips polarity at the same time as your hv source. This is why an universal motor runs on ac and on dc. You are basicly making one of those battery motors where you take an aa cell put a magnet on it and hang a wire on it so that it touches the other pole and the magnet. It works het same way with plasma
I have used those magnets before. You don't need a washer or anything. If you just center a wire in the middle and have a high enough voltage to make an arch then it will work. It doesn't even need to be perfect just close. You don't either need to cool it is your don't run a lot of watts.
@@TestyCool less power also means less nitrous oxide generation. These ceramic magnets are absolute horrible conductors so why would you do it like this.
@@leon13noelspy less power doesn't mean less nitrous oxide. As long as you have enough voltage to ionize the air it will work. Watts or power is voltage times Amps. so you can have really high voltage but really low amps. I used a neon light ballast from Lowes. 15w but it puts out around 500v. Then I stepped that up again with a flyback transformer I got out of a TV. That got me up to 16Kv at .0009375 amps. Worked like a charm. Yes those magnets are bad conductors but hell almost anything conducts at 16kv. The watts are so low though you dont even need to worry about heat or cooling.
@@TestyCool i used flyback transfprmers for oxydising nitrogen before. Using one of these ceramic magnets and a washer on top so the plasma can spin better. I didn't cool the magnet since i didn't think i needed to. After an hour that magnet wasn't a magnet anymore
I love it! I found your channel by watching hydrogen generator videos and here I am. I considered making one of these as well. If you use solar panels to run the pump and to create the arc, you spend nothing at all. You could have the apparatus set up and automatically running whenever the sun is shining. You'll get some very freakin pure HNO3 over time. In fact, if you forget about it for too long, NO2 will start to escape from your final bubbler and get into the air (UGH!) But, hey, FREE nitric acid! 😅
What an awesome way to generate the good stuff, thanks for sharing! It might not be a viable way to produce from bought electricity, but imagine creating a self contained nitric acid production unit the size of a beehive with a solar panel to power it that also serves as its roof to catch rainwater with, which in turn can be used in the generator. Once a month you drive by it and pick up the produce. With a few Niter Hives you'd have many years of free product.
An number of questions come to mind: 1) How much RF interference is the arc generating. Are you blanking tv reception for the area. 2) the reaction jar appears to have a metal lid. Is this corroding from the gas? 3) is it worth drying the input air? 4) have you considered adding potassium or ammonium hydroxide to the second collecting jar, so as to ensure no toxic gas escapes, and to collect the nitrate salts? I guess this may not be an issue in the US, where such salts are still available to domestic customers. 5) is the high voltage transformer rated for continuous operation as a spark generator? 6) is the spark current a.c. or dc ? 7) given that a plasma arc has negative or zero resistance, what is limiting the output current? Like your other video on chlorate production, this was very interesting.
Happy to answer what I can! 1) I'm not sure how much rf interference it generated and unfortunately I have no way to measure this. 2) the reactor lid was cut away in the center, and any exposed metal areas were covered with epoxy. The jar lids factory lining seems to have actually held up great to the environment in the reactor. 3) drying input air definitely would have helped preserve the integrity of the reactor components, like the copper electrodes and epoxy, as the nitric generated from moisture in the air degraded things quickly. I don't think drying the air would change efficiency though. 4) yes however I was hoping to avoid nitrite formation, which happened anyways, so next time I think in the final wash bottle I will just add a some lye. 5) This transformer is rated for continuous operation. 6) not sure if the arc is AC or DC, and it's unfortunately way out of the range of my meters to safely check. 7) I assume the transformer may be shunted, or it may be a solid state device with some kind of current limiting built in.
@@ElementalMaker Thank you for the information. I was aware of the process, it was covered in my chemistry education, and there are a number of UA-cam videos covering the process. All emphasises the poor efficiency of the process. It would be interesting to investigate the magnetic method of expanding the plasma in the arc. Whatever voltage you are using seems to be producing a more efficient reaction than some other examples I have seen. I think the DBX1 channel built a similar apparatus and produced a much poorer yield. Useful if there is no other access to nitric acid or its salts. In the uk ownership of sulphuric or nitric acid is now illigal. Fortunately, these were not the rules during my youth, so I had a chance to experiment. To do so now would risk serious legal consequences. Nice of you to perform the experiments for me to watch from a safe distance, I think America is at a safe distance. I also watch the explosions and fire channel, and Australia is at an even safer distance😁. I would have expected the electric arc to jam local HE, VHF and maybe UHF radio channels. So very local tv and radio reception should be affected. It all depends on the length and distribution of the EHT feed cables. After all it is a basic spark gap transmitter. An old medium/long wave am radio would provide an indication of the extent of any radio interference. There are a few things that can be done to mitigate and RFI. Such keeping the EHT cable loop as small as possible, consistent with avoiding cable insulation breakdown, maybe fitting a choke ferrite to the cables. Given the intended purpose for the EHT module, it is likely to have suppression capacitors and coils built in. I am a little surprised that it is rated for continuous operation. As you suggest there maybe a current limiting circuit.
Input from a radio/electronics nut: 1) Probably not too much - it's a commercial oil burner transformer designed to make an arc, so it's likely designed to minimize RFI, at least on the mains input. As for the HV side, the connecting wires are quite short, so there's not much of an antenna to radiate RF. Most effective radiators are 1/4 the wavelength of the RF, so these wires are going to radiate best somewhere in the high UHF to microwave region. There'll be very little of those frequencies present due to the parasitic inductance & capacitance of the wires themselves. 6) I'm almost certain it'd be AC, or you'd see uneven electrode wear (Think TIG welding, where using DC puts more heat into the negative side). Since it's designed for long-term use in an oil burner, rectifying the output would only add unnecessary cost and wear out one electrode. From the size of the unit and sound, I'm guessing it's probably a pretty simple chopper circuit taking unsmoothed mains and driving a ferrite transformer with bursts of several KHz 60 or 120 times a second. Switchmodes using smoothed mains make a hissing noise on the arc, and iron core transformers (MOTs, older neon sign transformers) make a smoother humming sounding arc.
Drilling into those glass jars was a feat in itself. Now that its has been 2 years, did you make a bunch and stop ? Or just on to another experiment? Really awesome glass and tube work!!
This is incredible, the way you collected nitric acid is nothing short of genius and borderline magic. Are there more efficient ways to collect nitric acid though with common materials?
You can thermally decompose Copper(II) Nitrate or distill nitric acid from Potassium nitrate and sulfuric acid. The latter of which is supposed to produce the purest form of Nitric acid. To be honest though, this is definitely the CHEAPEST method. You don't have to buy any chemicals, expensive glassware (chemical glassware can be quite expensive!) However, a fume hood for ALL of these methods, including the one in the video is a really great idea.
You can make relatively pure fuming nitric acid with stump remover and drain cleaner from the hardware store, the stump remover is potassium nitrate/KNO3 and the drain cleaner is (usually) 90 to 95% sulfuric acid, though if you can get your hands on 98% sulfuric that would be ideal, you'll get less water contamination. You pretty much follow the steps he did here after he boiled the sodium nitrate out of solution, the sulfuric acid and KNO3 (or sodium nitrate, either will work) get added together in the distillation rig which then is heated (the heat drives the reaction) and your nitric acid condenses into the collection flask. It's cheaper than buying it online and comes with no legal or red tape restrictions (which fuming nitric acid has a lot of), though if you have the licensing it's much cheaper to just buy it from an industrial supplier. For us amateur chemists that do things in very small quantities, making it this way is definitely the most economical method though, aside from the cost of the distillation setup (which as a chemist you should already have) it will cost maybe $30-$40 worth of materials for at least a full liter of fuming nitric acid, probably more if your process is efficient. That's at least half what you'd pay from an online retailer, assuming you could even find one willing to ship it to you. NileRed has an excellent video on the process, you should check it out.
With these videos being so popular, I'm surprised you don't have videos on other ways to make (and purify) nitric acid. Not everyone can just order it in the mail or go to a local chemical supply store to get it and it's one of the most useful substances in the world. The uses are endless.
@@deucedeuce1572 I mean what's more accessible to those without access to nitric than showing how to make it from thin air? There's a million videos on UA-cam making it from nitrates.
@@ElementalMaker True. I think this is one of the best videos for sure. Amazing how simple it is, yet countries would literally try to ban people from having it. I can only imagine the damage they've caused to science and progress. It's crazy to see how much Freedom has had to do with the progress of science compared to the destruction of knowledge that bans like this cause. Countries are too foolish to realize they're only harming themselves with these laws.
So for the Berkland Eyde reactor next time run two copper tubing loops instead of the coils for the electrodes . Pump cold water through them to cool them via a water pump and recurculate it back through copper coils in an icebath so you have supercooled water going through the electrode loops. However a fan works good if you plan to leave it for hours. You can also make the charging device from a 24-volt supply to a ZVS driver to a flyback transformer. On the transformer you want about 8 turns on the primary and 1000 turns on the secondary which pretty much gives you 9400volt output. You also want a grounded center tap on the transformer. This prevents the secondary from potential arcing to the transformer core.
@ElementalMaker if you don’t have an answer yet, the sudden color change may be some of the nitric acid decomposing due to temperature after adding enough baking soda. The color would be from NO2, I think.
In retrospect, and after talking to a couple chemist's I know, it looks to have been sodium nitrite contamination that caused the color change, which is also bolstered by the huge amount of nitrogen dioxide given off when adding the sulfuric acid.
Would it be that bad? It's the same oil burner transformer used all over the country for oil burners... But I guess it isn't contained within a big steel box acting as a Faraday cage.
@@ElementalMaker oh I was mostly just kidding 😄 I doubt it'd be too bad. One interesting note though is if I'm using an AM radio while in the car the radio will pick up the static from the sparkplugs igniting, pretty neat!
@ElementalMaker I think it definitely could be a nuisance to ham and SWL a few hundreds yards around. Especially because it's sparks, surge discharges ( blank large spectrum produced). You could just Faraday it a bit with metal mesh/grid on the jar and around the xformer, and by working on a metal table/plane (no matter if wood is on top of it, grid below the table would be ok too), all grounded. Quick dirty grounding already does a lot in that matter. ( sowy for bad english, I'm a french SWL, tryin' to hear your lab on air right now :)
Could you theoretically get rfna by continuing to bubble no2 into the acid-water mix for a long ass time until the water proportion gets smaller and smaller? Or does there come a time where you can’t dissolve any more beyond a certain concentration?
Unfortunately it maxes out around 50% from what I was reading. And it would be chemically impossible to get past the azeotrope at 70% without distillation or dessication.
Nice video. 1. As for the color change: Since you added caustic baking soda, the ph was lowered until some impurity dropped out. From the way this happened (evenly and no particles dropped to the ground) I would assume that that was the release of a colloidal compound, maybe small particles from copper wire (or tin from lid!) which disintegrated and was taken with the air stream. 2. I am not sure if the second step, converting dilute HNO3 into sodium nitrate, was needed. Just heat the primary and secondary acid liquids and drive out excess water. I guess that would have worked as well, or even better and faster. Anyhow: Great equipment (How about some nitril gloves, next time?) Will discuss that in my blog and share your video for sure.
Excellent comment! I think the color change was actually due to the nitrite contamination, It would be interesting to try this experiment again, and see if the same color change occurs, then bubble O2 into the solution, and see if that clears it, which would confirm nitrite. Nitrile gloves can actually be a hazard with concentrated nitric acid, they will spontaneously combust on contact, so bare hands are actually preferred.
so if you were processing inquarted gold using Nitric acid, could you collect the fumes and effectively recycle your nitric? i'm not saying go as far as you did with your purification process. but bubbling the gas through water and then using that water as a source of nitiric in the recovery process.
Hope you are doing well man. I need yotubes Patrick Warburton showing off the next cool project. First time I watched one of your videos I was laughing at Brocm Samson telling me how to make a forge from a helium tank.
Thank you! For sure it would be a great way to produce fertilizer with excess energy! Just be sure everything is done safely, NO2 gas is quite deadly. I'm considering doing the same, I have a 4 265w solar panels not being used right now, and that could be a great application.
@@ElementalMaker ah this explains it. I totally understand, kids always take priority. Well Merry Christmas, happy new year. And congratulations on the baby.
02:30 I am from Germany and here nitric acid is forbidden. So I make it myself when I need it with the exact same approach. In my reactor I use a "Jakobs ladder" as spark gap, because I run the reactor sometimes for weeks. A Jakobs ladder helps reducing the degradation of the electrodes and improves the cooling of the electrodes.
Very good insight. Have you found any epoxies or other, adhesives that withstand the corrosive environment, or do you dry your ingoing air? Also, what material tubing are you using? My latex tubing was pretty degraded, although the vinyl tubing seemed to hold up
Very cool setup! Nice job. Nitric acid isn't cheap when you factor in transportation costs, so might not be as cost inefficient as one might suspect. I don't recall what I paid for a 1 liter bottle. However, I do recall that shipping was more expensive than the acid given that it required special handling. Please be safe. Getting burned is a tough lesson. Nitric acid is nasty and dangerous. Should always wear gloves and eye protection. A fume hood is a must. Even a small NOX leak is enough to ruin your day.
Yeah years ago you could have done that on UA-cam, but I'm sure trying that today would get me a channel suspension and a knock on the door from a three letter agency
I think the issue was the amount of nitrous acid produced. Sodium nitrate shouldn't decompose at such low temps, although if I pushed it a couple hundred degrees higher we definitely would have made alot of nitrite
A ring magnet with an electrode in the center producing a spark gap in witch the plasma will rotate along the natural magnetic field of the ring magnet producing a spirel plasma wall in the ring magnet. That's how you can build the plasma wall you need to increase the efficiency of your reaction.
You should try to coat the interior of the reactor in some clear protection spray, the damage might come from a combination of chemical damage and UV damage, and some good clear coats are quite resistant to both.
Hope you guys enjoyed! Here's the parts used for this video:
-oil burner transformer: amzn.to/3OtU1jg
-air pump: amzn.to/3z2CN6T
-gas dispersion tube: amzn.to/3BcQcMv
-cooling fan: amzn.to/3cv5SAd
Are you related to Ave?
@@SynKronos Certainly of the same crazy mentality as us who watch them both... 🤣🤣🤣
what about using a microwave to make plasma inside the jar ...
did you sulfuric or nitric acid ?
Can a Aquarium air pump work just as well
finally, a project that involves high voltage, toxic gasses, corrosive liquids, poison and baking soda
Codys lab made this some time a go
@@tomirenfors2344 5 years ago
@Kristy Anne no gloves is fine here but eye protection he pobably has
Use h202 in place of h2o. 35% is better yield than 3% but 3% gets better yields than h20. Droplets are better than bubbles. Good video!
I've been wanting to do this type of project for some time now. Nothing like cheap chemistry/fertilizer
Back in the day I built one of these. I achieved a ring of plasma with microwave oven magnetron magnets; you know, those toroidal ones with a really high curie temperature. I had a stack of two of them in the reaction chamber (which was a glass jar too :D), sitting on the inside of the lid, sealed with silicone, iirc.
Between the magnets, in the hole, I had a ring of thin copper wire as close a possible to the size of the hole, as an anode. You can run the wire between the magnets, just flatten it with a hammer as to not have a huge gap between the magnets. I guess you could use the lip of the hole itself as an anode, as the magnets are really conductive. You'd probably have to cool the magnets somehow. The point of the ring is to not have the arc directly heat up the magnets.
For a cathode, just a wire with it's tip in the middle of the ring. You can conveniently run the cathode wire through the inlet hose.
I also read somewhere that it's more efficient the cooler the output gas is, something to do with an equilibrium reaction between NO and NO2 iirc, so I had the output run through a 1.5l bottle to give it time to cool. The chamber ran really hot 'cause I was pumping like a 100 watts in to it. I don't know the exact figure, but my crappy 555 -based driver was drawing like 150w; I melted a flyback to the carpet one time :D so I'm guessing it was really inefficient.
It all ended when I joked with a friend of my dad's that I could make terrible gunpowder with the sodium nitrate I was making from the nitric, and my dad happened to hear. Out of worry of me playing with explosives, he banned the thing.
I cried for an hour or two... It was the first project that I was really happy and proud of. At the time I really felt like it was the meaning of my life. It was all I could think about, I even forgot to eat while fiddling with it!
I mean, with hindsight, it was the right decision, but come on, if you're gonna ban it, ban it because of the toxic gasses I was filling my bedroom with, or because of the high voltage, or because of the fire risk!
I couldn't bare to disassemble the thing for months, so it just sat on the floor for that time. Some day I'm gonna build a version 2.0. I'm also gonna have a scrubber, I've breathed enough NOx and chlorine and HCl and ozone for a lifetime. A little tiny breath of chorine feels like a punch to the nose, and even a tiny concentration gives you a nasty runny nose and a cough, and makes the inside of your nose smell like bleach. Not healthy :D
Okay I'm gonna stop rambling now :D
Hope u get enough safety to creat 2.0 version. And If u do that, do u plan to film it, or is it just smth that u will do far way from now?
Your dad is a soy guzzler.
I can definitely relate, my childhood had its share of questionable chemistry too. I remember my first time inhaling chlorine was when I used my mother's plastic kitchen containers as a reaction vessel for generating HHO after promising her wouldn't damage them. Of course I ended up melting the bottom and getting a lungful of chlorine all within an hour.
Time to make version 2.0 if you haven't already! I don't know how old you are, but no one gets any younger and that seems like a project worth doing.
Actually that is a cost effective way to make HNO3. I've know about this process but most ppl were using MOTs that are over a 1KW, so it would be too expensive. At 35 watts over 2 days, you only used 1.6KW hours. At 10 cents/KW hour, you only used like 17cents worth of power to make 10ml. Last time I bought nitric with shipping it was like $270 for 10 liters or $27/liter. Your cost was $17/liter, not including your time and baking soda. Not too bad at all!
My thoughts exactly...
ESPECIALLY if shipping costs are a factor.
Zzu
If you're trying to get nitrite and not nitrate, this is a great and cheap method. Like you said, it's working out to about $0.01 per gram of the sodium salt, not including the electricity to boil off the water. To get pure nitrite, just recrystalize the mixed salts from ethanol. Sodium nitrite will crystallize out.
Should add the hot plate watt hours into the total cost of production.
I am a gearhead. This channel gets my attention a million times more than any horsepower channel on the net. I love this stuff.
Damn those are some kind words my friend thank you. I'm a wrench monkey myself, maybe one day I'll post some videos of my many Dino juice burning toys
@@ElementalMaker please do! That would be really great.
@@ElementalMaker Nitric acid and some propane mixture at the right amounts is nitromethane i think.
@@tnoutlaw73 That's neat, on wikipedia, it also says it produces other chemicals in the process.
Same for me as well
Please come back, we miss your great science ideas and your sence of humour. Hope you and the family are well
@@gutsngorrrr coming back very soon!
@@ElementalMaker That's fantastic news
@@ElementalMaker nice! We've missed you and your videos.
I came here to say the same thing!
I glad he’s still with us hell yeah
yes. YES!! Hobby chemist, hand crafted equipment, and a basement. This is the kind of content I'm about!
I miss your videos hope you upload something soon! I didn't know where to post this.
The epoxy degradation may be attributable to the UV generated by the electrical arc. Standard epoxies don't have UV inhibitors and they are very susceptible to UV damage.
Could some of it have been due to ozone too?
For that length of time? 🤔
The amount of UV radiation emitted by the arc depends on the strength of the current. In this case, it may not be enough to noticeably degrade the plastic in such a short time. But plastics are very sensitive to ozone. And just a quite noticeable amount of ozone is released in this reactor.
What epoxy could stand up better to uv damage then? I have need of such epoxy for another project for some equipment I'm developing.
@@samfisher9413 just add soot or carbon black to the epoxy.
My Mum enjoyed watchinhg this. She was a pharmaceutical chemist and made peoples prescription up before everything came in boxs ready made. When my sister and I left school mum went back to university and trained as an industrial chemist and ended up running the testing labs for a UK manufacturer. (she is 86 now) great video 2x👍
Great informative video on the topic, nice to see you posting again. I've been meaning to make one of these, Nitric acid is difficult to get hold of in the UK (I understand why, regulations changed after a bunch acid attacks)
- My best bit of advice would be to look for a free online copy of "Absorption of Nitrous Gases" by H. W. Webb. Published in 1923, it's a bit of a dense read and some of the science is outdated, but for free information on the topic it's the best resource I've found so far. The search function in the book is surprisingly good.
- I suspect the damage to the epoxy might be due more to UV or Ozone rather than the NO2, although damp air in the chamber would make a hot nitric environment. Not many materials are going to last long there. Provided the silicone tubing isn't too badly damaged then perhaps cutting some silicone baking trays as disposable gaskets could be an option.
- The reaction of Nitrogen and Oxygen to NO is a fast process, the conversion to NO2 is slower and the equilibrium is favoured at lower temperatures. Having a longer (ideally Teflon or other resistant material) tube between the jar and bubbler should improve the conversion of NO to NO2. Back in the day they had a large chamber to allow for this.
- When dissolved in water, the NO2 forms Nitric and Nitrous acid. The Nitrous acid decomposes with heat or higher Nitric concentrations to give Nitric acid and NO. Keeping the first bubbler warm might improve yield, or jump starting the first bubbler with a bit of your fuming acid might improve your next run.
- Nitrous Acid can be oxidised to Nitric acid by Oxygen, adding a second bubbler (or the second output of the air pump, ideally with a one way valve sold as aquarium supplies) to the absorption chamber would aid in oxidising the nitrous acid. This could be done after running the arc, provided you kept running the second jar to avoid losses. A timer setup on the arc supply might also work, and avoid the need for more plumbing.
- I would add an additional scrubber with some form of base, such as Sodium Carbonate, Calcium Hydroxide or similar to get as much yield as possible and reduce Nox emissions. This last scrubber will have a mix of Nitrates and Nitrites though. Too many scrubbers will make your air pump flow rate decrease, so be mindful of that.
- I would advise caution with the salt you produced. Nitrites are quite toxic, affecting haemoglobin and oxygen supply. It's nothing compared to NO2 and a poisoning you'd notice, but still something to keep in mind.
- The book I mentioned in parts discusses Ozone reacting with NO and other things, this wasn't feasible at the time, but with cheap AliExpress aquarium Ozone modules it might be worth experimenting. There's some stuff on Google Scholar about Ozone turning Nitrites to Nitrates, but it's mainly focused on wastewater treatment. Still worth considering.
-Not sure about using magnets, the videos I've seen look good, but it's not my area of expertise. Others have mentioned Magnetrons from microwaves, but old hard drives might be an alternative source that avoids the ceramic containing Beryllium found in old microwaves.
- With the cooling fan; perhaps putting a large plastic container over the arc vessel with the fan glued on top and vents cut in the side would work well. It would also prevent anything from shorting the spark coil and help accidentally touching any high voltage. The cooling would be focused on the jar and keeps fingers away from high voltage.
- Really looking forward to version 2, I might just have to get up off my arse and make my version 1. Hope the reply wasn't too long.
Really great suggestions! I'm gonna be getting a couple of those silicone baking mats and trying that for sure!
Even though I don't have a clue as to what you are talking about most of the time, I still enjoy the hell out of your videos! Thank you!
Hey @ElementalMaker, hope you're ok, been missing your channel and would live to know if you're going to come back. It would be great just to know whats happening.
I love the smell of NO2 in the morning! I need to revisit this at some point and make it proper and efficient
Great video showing how to use "common air" as a feedstock! Your reactor is a cool idea.
Man, when I see a new video I get all excited......lol. ... I've been watching you for a long time and it allows me to let my inner science geek out. I'm a retired carpenter and I have no real need to know how to make nitric acid but I still want to know...
Glad you enjoy the videos! Man I could use a carpenter right about now!
Too bad we aren't neighbors. I sorta do it for fun these days.
Thank you for your video. For those who are unfamiliar, Nitric Acid was also known as "Aqua Fortis" from the Latin words for strong water.
strong water🤣🤣🤣
It has been a while since your last post hope all is well with you and your family and love the videos
ikr its been a year now
great project! at least when handling dilute nitric acid and sulfuric acid try and wear gloves, always better to be safe. Now with fuming nitric acid wearing certain gloves is actually worse than not wearing them. Glad I found your channel
Your fatty hands are a pretty good protective layer and it will just stain you a bit yellow if you clean it off right away. Better than having gloves ignite and getting welded into your skin lmao
In some countries nitric acid is highly regulated. So the only way to get it is to produce it by yourself. And that is how I was getting nitric acid for my needs.
Let's see, what was the acid in grade school that turned your fingers yellow quickly? Yep, I think it was this stuff... I don't have a clue what experiments we were doing back then but I do remember the teacher taking the smoking version after class and diluting it down for the student variety we used for those experiments.
Decades later I was working at a dairy where they occasionally poured the concentrated version directly down a floor drain to unclog it. There were flames three foot tall coming out of that floor drain for awhile. Not sure what milk product buildups we're down in that clog to cause such a violent reaction but it was cool to watch! 20 minutes later and that drain was cured.
Now that's my kind of drain clog removal!
Great project, fine result.
I know you say not to do this 'at home' - but if done elsewhere, I'd surely recommend covering up the outputs from the HV-generator.
It's an easy way to improve on a bit risky setup, where lots of things can/will go wrong. Better safe than hurting while dying ;ø)
Well done Bob, one of the most interesting projects so far!
Thank you Carlo!
As a doctor and organic chemist, I definitely need to get something off my chest. For an amateur you make great videos. Plus, you can laugh at yourself, which is what I appreciate most. keep it up 👍
Thank you!
for the fact that you gave the original Inspiration ideea I left the video working. Thank you.
Very nice. A chemist friend and I made some NA years ago. Our setup was in the garage before realizing everything that was bare steel rusted overnight.
Also the UV from the arc is probably what degraded that epoxy like that. Most epoxies are not UV stable and I've seen it come out like that after being in a UV-C chamber I have.
Hi and greetings from the UK 🇬🇧 a late happy new year to you and yours, simple question have you forgotten us mortals? 😊 you do know we really enjoy watching 👀 your channel 😉
Hey Tom! Happy new year to you as well. I most definitely haven't forgotten the channel, unfortunately with the 1yr old and new work I've been very short on time. Hoping to get some new stuff in the works posted soon
Hey elemental maker. Merry christmas. Long time no see. Just wanted to say thanks for all your videos over the years.
Merry Christmas to you as well! Thank you! I plan to make more videos soon
@@ElementalMaker 🥺
Over the pandemic lockdowns from April 2020 to May 2021, I built and operated a larger scale B-E reactor that ran almost continuously. It produced 22L of approximately 40% HNO3 that I use for gold recovery/refining.
I'd love to see some video of your setup! Sounds awesome!
@@ElementalMaker
I have PDF's of 7 old chemistry books from WAAAAY back (early 1930's if I recall correctly). If you're interested, I could either email them to you, or give you download access from my Google Drive.
@@JohnLeePettimoreIII10 them mouths ago
But you can send me the google drive link? I am interisting in making one after making the HHO generator
@@JohnLeePettimoreIIIif you ever reply to the other guy, I'd like them too, would be amazing
@@y33t23 here ya go. 7 PDF's
#1
drive.google.com/open?id=1EEVlTzeFpGTCRkY186qUrvemU60gT7G6&usp=drive_fs
#2
drive.google.com/open?id=1WIKuRDRvNKQELWvH5dk4qMZkmUiBNKMV&usp=drive_fs
#3
drive.google.com/open?id=1AwHbQmaoSbwfv2McfQlxW2UYYg6xtwhT&usp=drive_fs
#4
drive.google.com/open?id=1rO8c11zpZpbz0UsuYS__h6qMZqWS5la0&usp=drive_fs
#5
drive.google.com/open?id=1pX7wgLqq5CckpUDqA4pPTktGNtuq-YGU&usp=drive_fs
#6
drive.google.com/open?id=1AFWPyDH4O5bRS6NINvLFL5V9TIkToLLw&usp=drive_fs
#7
drive.google.com/open?id=1YdDSjkSClFhXcZ_y81tScqltP-YWSOHI&usp=drive_fs
Really miss your videos, hope all is well
I hope you are well. I quite enjoyed your videos.
Glad you're back. Good video, as usual.
I use that same brand of drain cleaner for H2SO4. I've done extensive testing and reviewed the SDS - as far as I can tell there are no additives at all and my titrations and density tests put the concentration at 96-98%. I bought several jugs in case it disappears for some reason. Such a great and inexpensive source of clean H2SO4.
Yeah it's really good stuff. I also have a few gallons back up just in case lol
@@ElementalMaker in nyc you can buy NA otc
Nice generator. This is also by far the best video on this topic out there. I tried making a nitric acid generator last year using a microwave transformer with much less success. I struggled to keep the arc going without melting the copper electrodes.
You can use copper tubing for the air supply and exit, and energize the tubes. That way, they get a bit of cooling, but there is a risk of them burning in the electrical fire, with the air blowing right at the hotspot. The last one I built had the air input as a copper tube, some stainless steel wire as the electrode for that tube, and the other electrode was a tungsten "W" TIG welding electrode, in the exit tube, so the air could leave while tightly surrounding the tungsten.
A microwave transformer will put out WAY too much current and not very much voltage. That's why it wont work too well, the arc just gets way too hot which destroys most of the gases you want and it just turns back into regular air.
You could get some succes by limiting the current a lot, but ideally you want a completely different transformer. A neon sign or oil ignition transformer is closer to what you want, a TV flyback may be the best commonly available way though. You basically want a big, but cold arc.
@@Basement-Science Could you drive the B-E reactor with an electrostatic generator? (I imagine the throughput would be tiny even if it worked though.)
@@benjaminmiller3620 That's more the direction you'd want to go in, yes. Although I'm not sure what type of generator you mean exactly, something like a van de graaf would be very weak for example.
As I said, I think a TV flyback (driven by slayer exciter or other single-transistor driver) would be ideal here. The electrode layout is also very impactful of course.
@@Basement-Science I was thinking Wimshurst, and more as an experimental low tech solution, than an optimized one. One could build such a generator with copper age tech!
Hello from Scotland 🏴 I see traditional golden medicine in the back ♥️♥️♥️
The Scottish sure know how to make the Golden good stuff! I hope to visit some day and spend plenty of time in the distilleries!
Before the Haber process was developed, this was actually the main industrial route to making nitric acid: Air was blown through a huge spark array, making a mixture of NO and NO2 - this was further oxidised to convert the NO into more NO2, and finally absorbed into water to make nitric acid. In that last step, the NO2 disproportionates, some being oxidized further to nitric acid, the remainder being reduced back to NO. The latter was of course recycled back into the second oxidation step to make more NO2, enhancing the overall efficiency.
This was of course a vast improvement in nitric acid / nitrate production over mining guano deposits, which was a truly disgusting but necessary pastime. But as you correctly point out, it was also an extremely inefficient way of using electricity, since the vast majority of the electrical energy input was wasted as heat. So it was only really viable where power could be cheaply generated, which explains why the first plants were built near to the Norwegian hydroelectric power stations.
Man I might have to hire you to write some script for my videos. That was a great and concise explanation! I tried to explain all that in the video (or at least in filming), but I always ramble and then end up cutting out a ton of stuff during editing.
@@ElementalMaker I can certainly try, if you are serious about that offer. Just give me an idea of what you want to do for forthcoming videos and the kind of information you want to get across. Plus how much detail you want and what you want the maximum video length to be.
Nice demo man. It's always fascinated me that this is a viable route to nitrogen fertilizers from just electricity, air, and basically whatever additional fert reagent you have on hand.
WOW I have everything I need to make this so now I know what my next project will be, thanks for sharing this !
OK OK we've waited long enough. When is the next elemental coming to entertain and teach us stuff 🤔 😊
Miss you so much.
If your electrode wires are actually small copper tubes that also act is your gas inlets then it should stay cool from the inflow of gas.
Excellent upgrade idea!
Been a while, friend. Hope you’re well.
I've watched several of your videos to this point and I enjoy your content. However, I would like to see more documentation of details. In many of your processes, I would feel uncertain in attempting some of these projects myself. thank you
Thank you for the very informative and useful video.
I had read about this process on Wikipedia however they did not or could not specify the process clearly.
Thank you! Glad you found it informative!
I have watched every video and I need more.
Hey buddy, Former USMC turned family man.
Gotta say, I smell what you're stepping in. Absolutely love the videos. It's hard to find a fellow man who is as fiercely intelligent with a good sense of humor.
Anyways, not trying to give you pick up lines cause I don't bark up that tree but stay strong keep the videos coming. Just bought a tombstone welder to copy you. Not gonna do videos trying to one up.
Just gonna do those projects.
Making nitric acid next to make aqua regia.
Doin my own thing too.
Best Regards, Dave Malarky
Much appreciated Dave! Thank you for your sacrifice for our freedoms.
Good to see you back. This setup reminds me very much of the rig I built for silver recovery/refining. Instead of your reaction chamber I have a vacuum flask with an air pump at the vacuum port and the silver dissolving in the flask. All the NO2 is then piped out into multiple flasks to capture as much as possible. Last in line is a gas trap with KOH. Zero smell after final venting. It's shocking how much nitric I can recover and feed back into the first flask eliminating the need to buy more.
But I like what you've got going here. Have you noticed any condensation in the bottom of the reaction chamber? I'd expect some NO3 would slowly build up and settle in the bottom.
I binge watch you Chanel, that how good it is!!
Thank you! Great username btw!
awesome video man!
I see you are a man of taste and class. Glenfiddich is good stuff.
Nice to see you back on UA-cam!
4:52 i think possibly the bell from a CRT tv could be used as to spread the plasma disk. Take the windings off the plastic part and wrap them around the jar. I might try it lol its just so dangerous to try an manipulate the arc WHILE its running.
i will make use of this thank you good sir. niric acid is hard to get for me and so is sulphuric so making it from KNO3 was off the table. didn't know about this. very informative
If you can't get sulfuric, and this electrochemistry appeals to you you (as it should), you can make sulfuric from electrolysis of copper sulfate (I call it crystal smurf), which is a fun and beautiful process, and much more enjoyable than burning sulfur in air and sucking the fumes through water, like a dirty victorian. It's common enough that a lot of chemistry channels show how to do it.
@@buckstarchaser2376 You can do sulphuric acid, burning sulphur,and passing the SO2 in water don't? Distilling water from sulphuric is more easier than making electrical shenanigans I think...
@@isaacm1929 You would need to distill it either way, I think. I've never done the burning method, but the copper II sulfate electrolysis becomes very useful later for some uses, such as precious metals refining.
You can use a disc magnet from a magnetron and a washer and sone dc high voltage to make the plasma run in circles. Obviously you need to cool the magnet pretty good or it won't last long. For ac high voltage an electromagnet might work which flips polarity at the same time as your hv source. This is why an universal motor runs on ac and on dc. You are basicly making one of those battery motors where you take an aa cell put a magnet on it and hang a wire on it so that it touches the other pole and the magnet. It works het same way with plasma
The electromagnet would be better , you could have multiple anodes and cathodes and pulse them also.
I have used those magnets before. You don't need a washer or anything. If you just center a wire in the middle and have a high enough voltage to make an arch then it will work. It doesn't even need to be perfect just close. You don't either need to cool it is your don't run a lot of watts.
@@TestyCool less power also means less nitrous oxide generation. These ceramic magnets are absolute horrible conductors so why would you do it like this.
@@leon13noelspy less power doesn't mean less nitrous oxide. As long as you have enough voltage to ionize the air it will work. Watts or power is voltage times Amps. so you can have really high voltage but really low amps. I used a neon light ballast from Lowes. 15w but it puts out around 500v. Then I stepped that up again with a flyback transformer I got out of a TV. That got me up to 16Kv at .0009375 amps. Worked like a charm. Yes those magnets are bad conductors but hell almost anything conducts at 16kv. The watts are so low though you dont even need to worry about heat or cooling.
@@TestyCool i used flyback transfprmers for oxydising nitrogen before. Using one of these ceramic magnets and a washer on top so the plasma can spin better. I didn't cool the magnet since i didn't think i needed to. After an hour that magnet wasn't a magnet anymore
Thankyou for posting a video that doesn't suck
It's a hard thing to get away with on UA-cam now a days, but I'm glad you enjoyed! Thank you!
@@ElementalMaker back to the roots. Making stuff with elements
Good to watch a video again from you.
Thank you Jeff!
I love it! I found your channel by watching hydrogen generator videos and here I am. I considered making one of these as well. If you use solar panels to run the pump and to create the arc, you spend nothing at all. You could have the apparatus set up and automatically running whenever the sun is shining. You'll get some very freakin pure HNO3 over time. In fact, if you forget about it for too long, NO2 will start to escape from your final bubbler and get into the air (UGH!) But, hey, FREE nitric acid! 😅
I used the same pump in mine. I need to remake the spark gap and boost the power
Oh wow the lightning cycle in a bottle very cool dude
ماشاء الله
أنت رائع حقا مشكور جدا صديقي
You can also join both end of air pump output, there are special adopters for that in animal shops.
Yes, a Y-connector
What an awesome way to generate the good stuff, thanks for sharing! It might not be a viable way to produce from bought electricity, but imagine creating a self contained nitric acid production unit the size of a beehive with a solar panel to power it that also serves as its roof to catch rainwater with, which in turn can be used in the generator. Once a month you drive by it and pick up the produce. With a few Niter Hives you'd have many years of free product.
Love the name niter hives! I've actually bought a few solar panels to try and do just that! Great idea for the water collection too!
This reminds me of the video Cody from Codyslab did a few years ago I'm so glad I can see a hands on video about it
Yes! I've been waiting for a very long time to see someone do this. Thank you.
An number of questions come to mind:
1) How much RF interference is the arc generating. Are you blanking tv reception for the area.
2) the reaction jar appears to have a metal lid. Is this corroding from the gas?
3) is it worth drying the input air?
4) have you considered adding potassium or ammonium hydroxide to the second collecting jar, so as to ensure no toxic gas escapes, and to collect the nitrate salts? I guess this may not be an issue in the US, where such salts are still available to domestic customers.
5) is the high voltage transformer rated for continuous operation as a spark generator?
6) is the spark current a.c. or dc ?
7) given that a plasma arc has negative or zero resistance, what is limiting the output current?
Like your other video on chlorate production, this was very interesting.
Happy to answer what I can!
1) I'm not sure how much rf interference it generated and unfortunately I have no way to measure this.
2) the reactor lid was cut away in the center, and any exposed metal areas were covered with epoxy. The jar lids factory lining seems to have actually held up great to the environment in the reactor.
3) drying input air definitely would have helped preserve the integrity of the reactor components, like the copper electrodes and epoxy, as the nitric generated from moisture in the air degraded things quickly. I don't think drying the air would change efficiency though.
4) yes however I was hoping to avoid nitrite formation, which happened anyways, so next time I think in the final wash bottle I will just add a some lye.
5) This transformer is rated for continuous operation.
6) not sure if the arc is AC or DC, and it's unfortunately way out of the range of my meters to safely check.
7) I assume the transformer may be shunted, or it may be a solid state device with some kind of current limiting built in.
@@ElementalMaker Thank you for the information. I was aware of the process, it was covered in my chemistry education, and there are a number of UA-cam videos covering the process. All emphasises the poor efficiency of the process. It would be interesting to investigate the magnetic method of expanding the plasma in the arc. Whatever voltage you are using seems to be producing a more efficient reaction than some other examples I have seen. I think the DBX1 channel built a similar apparatus and produced a much poorer yield.
Useful if there is no other access to nitric acid or its salts.
In the uk ownership of sulphuric or nitric acid is now illigal. Fortunately, these were not the rules during my youth, so I had a chance to experiment. To do so now would risk serious legal consequences. Nice of you to perform the experiments for me to watch from a safe distance, I think America is at a safe distance. I also watch the explosions and fire channel, and Australia is at an even safer distance😁.
I would have expected the electric arc to jam local HE, VHF and maybe UHF radio channels. So very local tv and radio reception should be affected. It all depends on the length and distribution of the EHT feed cables. After all it is a basic spark gap transmitter. An old medium/long wave am radio would provide an indication of the extent of any radio interference.
There are a few things that can be done to mitigate and RFI. Such keeping the EHT cable loop as small as possible, consistent with avoiding cable insulation breakdown, maybe fitting a choke ferrite to the cables. Given the intended purpose for the EHT module, it is likely to have suppression capacitors and coils built in. I am a little surprised that it is rated for continuous operation. As you suggest there maybe a current limiting circuit.
Input from a radio/electronics nut:
1) Probably not too much - it's a commercial oil burner transformer designed to make an arc, so it's likely designed to minimize RFI, at least on the mains input. As for the HV side, the connecting wires are quite short, so there's not much of an antenna to radiate RF. Most effective radiators are 1/4 the wavelength of the RF, so these wires are going to radiate best somewhere in the high UHF to microwave region. There'll be very little of those frequencies present due to the parasitic inductance & capacitance of the wires themselves.
6) I'm almost certain it'd be AC, or you'd see uneven electrode wear (Think TIG welding, where using DC puts more heat into the negative side). Since it's designed for long-term use in an oil burner, rectifying the output would only add unnecessary cost and wear out one electrode. From the size of the unit and sound, I'm guessing it's probably a pretty simple chopper circuit taking unsmoothed mains and driving a ferrite transformer with bursts of several KHz 60 or 120 times a second. Switchmodes using smoothed mains make a hissing noise on the arc, and iron core transformers (MOTs, older neon sign transformers) make a smoother humming sounding arc.
Drilling into those glass jars was a feat in itself. Now that its has been 2 years, did you make a bunch and stop ? Or just on to another experiment? Really awesome glass and tube work!!
This is incredible, the way you collected nitric acid is nothing short of genius and borderline magic.
Are there more efficient ways to collect nitric acid though with common materials?
You can thermally decompose Copper(II) Nitrate or distill nitric acid from Potassium nitrate and sulfuric acid. The latter of which is supposed to produce the purest form of Nitric acid.
To be honest though, this is definitely the CHEAPEST method. You don't have to buy any chemicals, expensive glassware (chemical glassware can be quite expensive!)
However, a fume hood for ALL of these methods, including the one in the video is a really great idea.
You can make relatively pure fuming nitric acid with stump remover and drain cleaner from the hardware store, the stump remover is potassium nitrate/KNO3 and the drain cleaner is (usually) 90 to 95% sulfuric acid, though if you can get your hands on 98% sulfuric that would be ideal, you'll get less water contamination. You pretty much follow the steps he did here after he boiled the sodium nitrate out of solution, the sulfuric acid and KNO3 (or sodium nitrate, either will work) get added together in the distillation rig which then is heated (the heat drives the reaction) and your nitric acid condenses into the collection flask. It's cheaper than buying it online and comes with no legal or red tape restrictions (which fuming nitric acid has a lot of), though if you have the licensing it's much cheaper to just buy it from an industrial supplier. For us amateur chemists that do things in very small quantities, making it this way is definitely the most economical method though, aside from the cost of the distillation setup (which as a chemist you should already have) it will cost maybe $30-$40 worth of materials for at least a full liter of fuming nitric acid, probably more if your process is efficient. That's at least half what you'd pay from an online retailer, assuming you could even find one willing to ship it to you.
NileRed has an excellent video on the process, you should check it out.
Good to see you have acid proof hands.
love the Aldi's jars, nothing says DIY better
pressed subscribe as hard as i could great work man keep it up your gona go far
Love the bottle of Glenfidditch just sitting in the background the whole time
I attempted to make one with a simple boost back. The voltage was to low and the spark gap was to small.
I wonder if UV from the arc accelerated the decomposition of the epoxy with Nitric?
A lab set up with a bottle of glenfiddich in the center. Beautiful.
With these videos being so popular, I'm surprised you don't have videos on other ways to make (and purify) nitric acid. Not everyone can just order it in the mail or go to a local chemical supply store to get it and it's one of the most useful substances in the world. The uses are endless.
@@deucedeuce1572 I mean what's more accessible to those without access to nitric than showing how to make it from thin air? There's a million videos on UA-cam making it from nitrates.
@@ElementalMaker True. I think this is one of the best videos for sure. Amazing how simple it is, yet countries would literally try to ban people from having it. I can only imagine the damage they've caused to science and progress. It's crazy to see how much Freedom has had to do with the progress of science compared to the destruction of knowledge that bans like this cause. Countries are too foolish to realize they're only harming themselves with these laws.
I've seen you on some GOOD AMERICAN channel comments my friend! 100% SUPPORT!
What channels that my friend? Appreciate the comment 👍
This one to be exact!
ua-cam.com/video/57XIDurveog/v-deo.html
So for the Berkland Eyde reactor next time run two copper tubing loops instead of the coils for the electrodes . Pump cold water through them to cool them via a water pump and recurculate it back through copper coils in an icebath so you have supercooled water going through the electrode loops. However a fan works good if you plan to leave it for hours. You can also make the charging device from a 24-volt supply to a ZVS driver to a flyback transformer. On the transformer you want about 8 turns on the primary and 1000 turns on the secondary which pretty much gives you 9400volt output. You also want a grounded center tap on the transformer. This prevents the secondary from potential arcing to the transformer core.
Good to see you posting videos again man . Keep them coming . I have definitely learned a lot from your videos love the channel
@ElementalMaker if you don’t have an answer yet, the sudden color change may be some of the nitric acid decomposing due to temperature after adding enough baking soda. The color would be from NO2, I think.
In retrospect, and after talking to a couple chemist's I know, it looks to have been sodium nitrite contamination that caused the color change, which is also bolstered by the huge amount of nitrogen dioxide given off when adding the sulfuric acid.
I should have added some hydrogen peroxide to the reactor at the end to ensure all the nitrous acid was converted to nitric
Having done gold refining before this project was very cool!
But where did you go?
You can use a copper tube instead of copper wire, it can be omitted air tube.
I bet the local ham radio operators just LOVE that you're running that lol
Would it be that bad? It's the same oil burner transformer used all over the country for oil burners... But I guess it isn't contained within a big steel box acting as a Faraday cage.
@@ElementalMaker oh I was mostly just kidding 😄 I doubt it'd be too bad. One interesting note though is if I'm using an AM radio while in the car the radio will pick up the static from the sparkplugs igniting, pretty neat!
@ElementalMaker I think it definitely could be a nuisance to ham and SWL a few hundreds yards around. Especially because it's sparks, surge discharges ( blank large spectrum produced).
You could just Faraday it a bit with metal mesh/grid on the jar and around the xformer, and by working on a metal table/plane (no matter if wood is on top of it, grid below the table would be ok too), all grounded. Quick dirty grounding already does a lot in that matter. ( sowy for bad english, I'm a french SWL, tryin' to hear your lab on air right now :)
Could you theoretically get rfna by continuing to bubble no2 into the acid-water mix for a long ass time until the water proportion gets smaller and smaller? Or does there come a time where you can’t dissolve any more beyond a certain concentration?
Unfortunately it maxes out around 50% from what I was reading. And it would be chemically impossible to get past the azeotrope at 70% without distillation or dessication.
Insread of having an air dryer could you use silica gel for your generator?
Nice video. 1. As for the color change: Since you added caustic baking soda, the ph was lowered until some impurity dropped out. From the way this happened (evenly and no particles dropped to the ground) I would assume that that was the release of a colloidal compound, maybe small particles from copper wire (or tin from lid!) which disintegrated and was taken with the air stream. 2. I am not sure if the second step, converting dilute HNO3 into sodium nitrate, was needed. Just heat the primary and secondary acid liquids and drive out excess water. I guess that would have worked as well, or even better and faster. Anyhow: Great equipment (How about some nitril gloves, next time?) Will discuss that in my blog and share your video for sure.
Excellent comment! I think the color change was actually due to the nitrite contamination, It would be interesting to try this experiment again, and see if the same color change occurs, then bubble O2 into the solution, and see if that clears it, which would confirm nitrite. Nitrile gloves can actually be a hazard with concentrated nitric acid, they will spontaneously combust on contact, so bare hands are actually preferred.
İ think the plastic hose got dissolved. İf you look closely the plastic hose is the same color as the unpure nitric acid.
so if you were processing inquarted gold using Nitric acid, could you collect the fumes and effectively recycle your nitric? i'm not saying go as far as you did with your purification process. but bubbling the gas through water and then using that water as a source of nitiric in the recovery process.
For sure!
Hope you are doing well man. I need yotubes Patrick Warburton showing off the next cool project. First time I watched one of your videos I was laughing at Brocm Samson telling me how to make a forge from a helium tank.
Thanks for a great video, if you had cheap solar or wind power, would it be a feasible way to produce fertiliser from excess electricity?
Thank you! For sure it would be a great way to produce fertilizer with excess energy! Just be sure everything is done safely, NO2 gas is quite deadly. I'm considering doing the same, I have a 4 265w solar panels not being used right now, and that could be a great application.
@@ElementalMaker that's fantastic, you've just gained another subscriber🙂
@@ElementalMaker Pitter patter, let's get at 'er
5 months and no video? I have been watching some back videos. Com on man you can do this!
There will be more! Have a one yr old and very heavy workload right now, so tinker time has taken a huge hit, but I'm getting back at it
@@ElementalMaker ah this explains it. I totally understand, kids always take priority. Well Merry Christmas, happy new year. And congratulations on the baby.
@@ElementalMaker
A one year old? Yeah, that'll do it.
See you again in a few years buddy, hang in there.
Dutch Farmer need to know this !
02:30 I am from Germany and here nitric acid is forbidden. So I make it myself when I need it with the exact same approach. In my reactor I use a "Jakobs ladder" as spark gap, because I run the reactor sometimes for weeks. A Jakobs ladder helps reducing the degradation of the electrodes and improves the cooling of the electrodes.
Very good insight. Have you found any epoxies or other, adhesives that withstand the corrosive environment, or do you dry your ingoing air? Also, what material tubing are you using? My latex tubing was pretty degraded, although the vinyl tubing seemed to hold up
@@ElementalMaker I use high temperature silicone for everything and PTFE tubing.
@@emmepombar3328 great to know, thank you so much 👍
For my bubbler I use a big flower vase (~1 meter in height and has a volume of around 5 liters).
@@ElementalMaker I've sent you an e-mail with two short videos of my first setup.
Very cool setup! Nice job. Nitric acid isn't cheap when you factor in transportation costs, so might not be as cost inefficient as one might suspect. I don't recall what I paid for a 1 liter bottle. However, I do recall that shipping was more expensive than the acid given that it required special handling.
Please be safe. Getting burned is a tough lesson. Nitric acid is nasty and dangerous. Should always wear gloves and eye protection. A fume hood is a must. Even a small NOX leak is enough to ruin your day.
If it only requires 40 watts, it could easily be powered by solar.
Really cool video. Thanks for making it.
Dude where did you go
Glad you didn't mention glycerin. But what a chemistry experiment that would be. Might be a little frowned upon
Yeah years ago you could have done that on UA-cam, but I'm sure trying that today would get me a channel suspension and a knock on the door from a three letter agency
Sodium nitrate can thermally decompose into the nitrite, so maybe the long drying on heat contributed to the large proportion of nitrite.
I think the issue was the amount of nitrous acid produced. Sodium nitrate shouldn't decompose at such low temps, although if I pushed it a couple hundred degrees higher we definitely would have made alot of nitrite
A ring magnet with an electrode in the center producing a spark gap in witch the plasma will rotate along the natural magnetic field of the ring magnet producing a spirel plasma wall in the ring magnet. That's how you can build the plasma wall you need to increase the efficiency of your reaction.
i was just looking this up yesterday!
You should try to coat the interior of the reactor in some clear protection spray, the damage might come from a combination of chemical damage and UV damage, and some good clear coats are quite resistant to both.