Nitric acid from air and water:

[qst42know]

The jungle with no nitric, no sulfuric, no nitrates, likely low on electricity as well, kinda hard to get anything done I would think.

Will they allow pants or do you have to bring a gourd to wear or loin cloth? :mrgreen:

 

[HAuCl4]

Doing a little reading I found out that the main driver for the development for the Platinum group metals research by Gilchrist and many others was the need to generate nitric acid for the industrial manufacture of fertilizers in a large scale, after the first world war.

Reading more, I doubt that the processes can be adapted to small scale. It includes making ammonia first, and then oxidizing the ammonia. Both processes conducted at high pressure and with catalysts.

 

[NoIdea]

Depends on what is in the air that you use, CO2 may produce carbon based compounds, N2 may produce nitrogen type compounds, and so on. Not just a straight forward air + spark = acid. Natural nitric acid is produced via. lighting and nitrogen.

Deano

 

[butcher]

Air is mostly nitrogen so a spark or thousand of tiny sparks can make a tiny bit of NO2 and if mixed in moiture or bubbled in water will form nitric acid, but the volume of NO2 produced would be very small, it would take a very large unit maybe made with thousands and thousands of small needles all sparking with air flow through them, a low current high voltage spark generator to get just a little bit of nitric acid, not practical in my opinion, nitrates and acid for homemade are the easiest for smalll scale production.