# Nitric @ homedepot.



## Anonymous

Sikagard Concrete Clean & Etch

I was lurking around seeing if my local depo sold Muratic acid, which they don't.

But they do sell Sikagard Concrete Clean & Etch. Which on the bottle says it is a mixture of Nitric acid and Phosphoric. I tried looking up the concentration data, and found very little.

anyone else try this stuff?

Pictures to follow.


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## jimdoc

Here is the MSDS;
http://www.sikaconstruction.com/msds-cpd-sikagardcleanandetch-us.pdf


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## jimdoc

Here is another for the heavy duty, this one appears to have nitric
in it.
http://www.sikaconstruction.com/msds-cpd-sikagardheavydutycleanandetch-us.pdf


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## Anonymous

Yeah I found that. Thats the one..

Anyone know if this stuff could be useful? Current going price is 15.96 a gallon bottle. In contrast to nitric which self for about 40 a bottle. Now I realize this isn't pure, but still could be extremely usefull.

I am going to try it on a small batch of scrap soon as my SMB and Tin powers shows up.


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## Lou

That would not be very useful as the phosphoric acid will mess up reactions. It would also be difficult to distill, as phosphoric acid etches glass. With a vacuum distillation setup you could easily produce high quality nitric acid from this.


I've never seen this product before and I am curious to know how expensive it is?


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## Anonymous

Lou said:


> That would not be very useful as the phosphoric acid will mess up reactions. It would also be difficult to distill, as phosphoric acid etches glass. With a vacuum distillation setup you could easily produce high quality nitric acid from this.
> 
> 
> I've never seen this product before and I am curious to know how expensive it is?



Current going price is 15.96 a gallon bottle. In contrast to nitric which self for about 40 a bottle. Now I realize this isn't pure, but still could be extremely usefull.

I am going to try it on a small batch of scrap soon as my SMB and Tin powder shows up.


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## jimdoc

A friend of mine buys an acid to clean wheels that has
sulfuric/phosphoric/hydrofluoric. I forget the name.
I warned him about it and he just laughed like its a
joke, saying that it burns a little when it splashes on
his skin. Some people need to learn the hard way.
Jim


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## NuggetHuntingFool

Couldn't he just make poor man's and be better off?

Just a thought.


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## Noxx

NuggetHuntingFool said:


> Couldn't he just make poor man's and be better off?
> 
> Just a thought.



That's what I think also.

I've got a distillation setup on eBay for not that much and it makes good quality nitric acid.

If you can get a cheap nitrate and cheap sulfuric acid, that would be just perfect.


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## Lou

Jdwisnie said:


> Lou said:
> 
> 
> 
> That would not be very useful as the phosphoric acid will mess up reactions. It would also be difficult to distill, as phosphoric acid etches glass. With a vacuum distillation setup you could easily produce high quality nitric acid from this.
> 
> 
> I've never seen this product before and I am curious to know how expensive it is?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Current going price is 15.96 a gallon bottle. In contrast to nitric which self for about 40 a bottle. Now I realize this isn't pure, but still could be extremely usefull.
> 
> I am going to try it on a small batch of scrap soon as my SMB and Tin powder shows up.
Click to expand...



MSDS says 35% nitric acid content tops. Let's say 33% for convenience (as you will lose some when distilling it).

So you will need 3 gallons of this at $15.96/gallon to make 1 gallon of 100% nitric acid. 100% nitric acid decomposes spontaneously though, so you'd want azeotropic nitric at about 68% concentration. That would make about a gallon and a half of 68% conc. nitric acid, probably costing about $53 or so to make. That correlates to $36 per gallon. That's still WAY too much. Good news is no hazmat, bad news, you'll need a distillation setup of some sort, preferably stainless.

My conclusion is that this is utterly not useful unless you invest in an expensive distillation setup. You can get a gallon of nitric for much cheaper elsewhere.


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## Anonymous

Fair enough, glad I asked.


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## OMG

According to a thread at sciencemaddness you should be able to distill the nitric out of the phosphoric and obtain at the most a 68% fairly pure nitric acid, and the phosphoric/phosphates will stay behind.
Here it is:
http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=9499&page=1#pid115866


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## nickton

It sounds to me that this could almost be ready made AR since it has nitric and phosphoric. Perhaps one could use it undistilled to simply save on pure nitric use when putting gold into solution. Any thoughts?


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## jimdoc

nickton said:


> It sounds to me that this could almost be ready made AR since it has nitric and phosphoric. Perhaps one could use it undistilled to simply save on pure nitric use when putting gold into solution. Any thoughts?




No. Forget that thought. Bad idea.

Jim


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## nickton

why is that a bad idea? The ingredients are 15-15% nitric, 15-35% phosphoric, and water. 
All you need to do is add some muriatic and nitric to the mix, and not use as much of your lab grade purer nitric. I think it would be a money saver.


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## nickton

Also What happens when you reduce it a bit by boiling? Wouldn't that just make it less diluted? Or does the boiling also evaporate nitric?


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## jimdoc

The phosphoric is not wanted in gold refining.
You don't make AR with phosphoric.

You want to stick with what works. Trying to save money usually backfires on you with ideas like this. That is my advice, you can wait for others advice, or do what you want. I wouldn't use it.

This thread had been dead since 2008 for a reason. After ten years, Home Depot may not even sell this any more.


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## Shark

There are much easier ways to make nitric acid, if it is really needed. But if you need AR and have no access to nitric, study "the poorman's" method. 

Also, as I don't have jimdoc's experience I can't expound on the effects of phosphoric in AR, therefore it would be good reason for me to avoid it.



> You want to stick with what works.


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## jimdoc

Lou explained it back in 2008;




Lou said:


> That would not be very useful as the phosphoric acid will mess up reactions. It would also be difficult to distill, as phosphoric acid etches glass.


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## nickton

oops. I mistook phosphoric for hydrochloric. MY MISTAKE. I was thinking hydrochloric but being a newbie for some reason I get the two confused. Thanks for the input anyways. :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:


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