Nitric Generator

[Master Nater]

I've been noting a lot of our EU and Canadian friends who have problems coming up with nitric acid, as it's not legal to buy there. As i love a good challenge, i began learning what i can about what it takes to produce nitric from as little input as possible, and found a little information on how to produce nitric acid out of air and water. I figured it made sense, as the air we breathe is 75% (ish) nitrogen, anyhow, right? So, having seen a couple of these arc reactors, i'm going to try to build my own, and see how things go. Maybe it will help a few of our friends who have problems getting things, and maybe it will simply just excite some good discussion about the topic. Take a look at the videos, and tell me what you think. I'm always open to new ideas.

first video -
short follow up -

 

[stoweby]

Subbed. I'm interested to see how this goes. I'd build one in no time if this proves fruitful.

 

[Yggdrasil]

Subbed. I'm interested to see how this goes. I'd build one in no time if this proves fruitful.

Welcome.
This has been done for a long time.
It is not very efficient and it takes a lot of electricity.

 

[Martijn]

I've been noting a lot of our EU and Canadian friends who have problems coming up with nitric acid, as it's not legal to buy there. As i love a good challenge, i began learning what i can about what it takes to produce nitric from as little input as possible, and found a little information on how to produce nitric acid out of air and water. I figured it made sense, as the air we breathe is 75% (ish) nitrogen, anyhow, right? So, having seen a couple of these arc reactors, i'm going to try to build my own, and see how things go. Maybe it will help a few of our friends who have problems getting things, and maybe it will simply just excite some good discussion about the topic. Take a look at the videos, and tell me what you think. I'm always open to new ideas.

first video -
short follow up -

Great theory. Looks easy to do and limitless supply of nitrogen in the air.

Yes! awesome!

Or maybe No?..

One touch of that high voltage spike generator and you are dead. No but's or if what's.. dead.

Normal electrical insulation is insufficient as it's rated for 1000 to 1500 Volts max. Not the 10.000 to 100.000 Volts or more you need to oxidise the nitrogen in the air. You need high voltage material. For every part near the high voltage.

Then you have the total waste of tons (kilo watts) of energy in a time of big energy saving questions and the losses (or high production costs) you will have producing this.

There are other ways.

 

[Shark]

Spend your time processing material or searching for new suppliers. Buy your nitric, or distill your own ( a lot of info on the forum on how). Even make it in situ or make poormans AR. All of which is more economical than using electricity to generate it, and less dangerous.

 

[4metals]

Visions of "Young Frankenstein" come to me when seeing the Jacobs ladder arc climbing up inside the chamber. Cannot help but imagining coming back into the lab and realizing "It's ALIVE!"

 

[Master Nater]

Great theory. Looks easy to do and limitless supply of nitrogen in the air.

Yes! awesome!

Or maybe No?..

One touch of that high voltage spike generator and you are dead. No but's or if what's.. dead.

Normal electrical insulation is insufficient as it's rated for 1000 to 1500 Volts max. Not the 10.000 to 100.000 Volts or more you need to oxidise the nitrogen in the air. You need high voltage material. For every part near the high voltage.

Then you have the total waste of tons (kilo watts) of energy in a time of big energy saving questions and the losses (or high production costs) you will have producing this.

There are other ways.

this is the second time someone has tried giving me electrical advice on here, like i'm on an electrical forum. i don't need your electrical advice. especially when it's wrong. do you know what it takes to kill a human being? 45mA for a female, and roughly 75mA for a male. that's the amount of current flow (not voltage) that it takes to over-ride your nervous system and perform a muscle contraction that will cause you to grab ahold of and ensure you keep hold of the circuit (if you were so dumb to allow it to happen) granted, the likelihood of that happening on a power-limited 10,000v ignition transformer is NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. as if it weren't already a power-limited circuit, and somehow the voltage were high enough to induce enough current through your semi-resistor of a body, it would blow you off of the circuit. the only thing you would have to worry about would be the thermal burns, not the grip of the electrical circuit. 336w is not going to give you instantaneous thermal burns. it will turn your arm numb for a half-day or so, and will not be good on your nervous system, but will not make you "dead."

this is why the UL GFCI threshold on most GFI breakers is set at 30mA and a GFI receptacle is somewhere around 4-6mA. do you know what AMPERAGE that 10,000v transformer is producing? let's do the math using ohm's law... 120v * 2.8a = 336w. 336w / 10,000v 33.6mA.

i'd suggest sticking to refining advice. i'll do the electrical. it's why i'm a master electrician.

you didn't think my screen-name meant something else, did you?

 

[Master Nater]

Visions of "Young Frankenstein" come to me when seeing the Jacobs ladder arc climbing up inside the chamber. Cannot help but imagining coming back into the lab and realizing "It's ALIVE!"

cool little projects like this are why i'm here. learning can be fun!

 

[Master Nater]

as an update, i just got my glass cutter, and am experimenting on cutting boro3.3. one of my graduated cylinders came in with the bottom broken, so i have a perfect test-sample to try my glass-cutting on. i'm having success, but have will need to do quite a bit of sanding, as the boiling water trick of getting the score line to finish the cut isn't working as well as i'd hoped. more to follow...

edit: spelling

 

[Yggdrasil]

this is the second time someone has tried giving me electrical advice on here, like i'm on an electrical forum. i don't need your electrical advice. especially when it's wrong. do you know what it takes to kill a human being? 45mA for a female, and roughly 75mA for a male. that's the amount of current flow (not voltage) that it takes to over-ride your nervous system and perform a muscle contraction that will cause you to grab ahold of and ensure you keep hold of the circuit (if you were so dumb to allow it to happen) granted, the likelihood of that happening on a power-limited 10,000v ignition transformer is NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. as if it weren't already a power-limited circuit, and somehow the voltage were high enough to induce enough current through your semi-resistor of a body, it would blow you off of the circuit. the only thing you would have to worry about would be the thermal burns, not the grip of the electrical circuit. 336w is not going to give you instantaneous thermal burns. it will turn your arm numb for a half-day or so, and will not be good on your nervous system, but will not make you "dead."

this is why the UL GFCI threshold on most GFI breakers is set at 30mA and a GFI receptacle is somewhere around 4-6mA. do you know what AMPERAGE that 10,000v transformer is producing? let's do the math using ohm's law... 120v * 2.8a = 336w. 336w / 10,000v 33.6mA.

i'd suggest sticking to refining advice. i'll do the electrical. it's why i'm a master electrician.

you didn't think my screen-name meant something else, did you?

I think the general rule is that if you get 100mA through the heart it will stop.
Of course it will vary some.

Too bad I did not react to the info as I was more focused of the ineffective of the process.
Much more sensible to make ut from Nitrates and Sulfuric.

 

[Master Nater]

I think the general rule is that if you get 100mA through the heart it will stop.
Of course it will vary some.

Too bad I did not react to the info as I was more focused of the ineffective of the process.
Much more sensible to make ut from Nitrates and Sulfuric.

like i said in the video. i had just noticed a few folks in places like canada and the EU that cannot easily buy nitric, and that lead me to the question of what else they cannot buy. when governments get around to regulating electricity, and air, they won't be able to do this, but until then, why not give it a shot? so, i figured it looked like a fun experiment, and a post to go with it. who knows. maybe i'll discover something new?

 

[Yggdrasil]

like i said in the video. i had just noticed a few folks in places like canada and the EU that cannot easily buy nitric, and that lead me to the question of what else they cannot buy. when governments get around to regulating electricity, and air, they won't be able to do this, but until then, why not give it a shot? so, i figured it looked like a fun experiment, and a post to go with it. who knows. maybe i'll discover something new?

Well there are users that have done this already if I'm not mistaken.
And plenty that have used the Nitrate/Sulfuric option.

 

[Master Nater]

that's good. then there should be plenty of tips from people on how to do it more efficiently, instead of a bunch of reasons on why not to.

 

[Martijn]

this is the second time someone has tried giving me electrical advice on here, like i'm on an electrical forum. i don't need your electrical advice. especially when it's wrong. do you know what it takes to kill a human being? 45mA for a female, and roughly 75mA for a male. that's the amount of current flow (not voltage) that it takes to over-ride your nervous system and perform a muscle contraction that will cause you to grab ahold of and ensure you keep hold of the circuit (if you were so dumb to allow it to happen) granted, the likelihood of that happening on a power-limited 10,000v ignition transformer is NEAR IMPOSSIBLE. as if it weren't already a power-limited circuit, and somehow the voltage were high enough to induce enough current through your semi-resistor of a body, it would blow you off of the circuit. the only thing you would have to worry about would be the thermal burns, not the grip of the electrical circuit. 336w is not going to give you instantaneous thermal burns. it will turn your arm numb for a half-day or so, and will not be good on your nervous system, but will not make you "dead."

this is why the UL GFCI threshold on most GFI breakers is set at 30mA and a GFI receptacle is somewhere around 4-6mA. do you know what AMPERAGE that 10,000v transformer is producing? let's do the math using ohm's law... 120v * 2.8a = 336w. 336w / 10,000v 33.6mA.

i'd suggest sticking to refining advice. i'll do the electrical. it's why i'm a master electrician.

you didn't think my screen-name meant something else, did you?

Good to know you are 'knowledgeable' on electricity. F.y.i.: I'm a graduated electrician and instrumentation technician and a certified safety officer. I don't just warn you but other members as well, who might not know about the dangers.
The mA you are referring to are Amperages through the hart area, that's why earth fault detection is set at that amperage, to keep it at a safe minimum.
Some people have survived lightning strikes.

This is something different that the let-go limit of your muscles you are referring to.

then you have 50VAC or 110VDC, which is considered the safe voltage threshold for humans as the current caused by this voltage and the human resistance can not cause damage.

As a lot of people misunderstand electricity, the tend to believe "facts" that are just not that.

Better safe than sorry (dead or severely injured members). If you still disagree, why not make a video of you holding a Jacobs ladder while in operation.

I don't think too much about nick-names or avatar pictures. We've had cheap dating site pic's or escort service like pictures on here, asking chemical questions. Some folks are weird.

Per the bold print, family and friends of people who died from getting shocked, that could not help it or prevent it may take offense in your statements.
You can't know something you never learned...

 

[Martijn]

I guess someone already did that. with bad results.


so, mister nater, master expert on electricity, please explain..

if not, then you should really be silent and let others warn people of really extremely smart ideas like yours.

 

[Master Nater]

Good to know you are 'knowledgeable' on electricity. F.y.i.: I'm a graduated electrician and instrumentation technician and a certified safety officer. I don't just warn you but other members as well, who might not know about the dangers.
The mA you are referring to are Amperages through the hart area, that's why earth fault detection is set at that amperage, to keep it at a safe minimum.
Some people have survived lightning strikes.

This is something different that the let-go limit of your muscles you are referring to.

then you have 50VAC or 110VDC, which is considered the safe voltage threshold for humans as the current caused by this voltage and the human resistance can not cause damage.

As a lot of people misunderstand electricity, the tend to believe "facts" that are just not that.

Better safe than sorry (dead or severely injured members). If you still disagree, why not make a video of you holding a Jacobs ladder while in operation.

I don't think too much about nick-names or avatar pictures. We've had cheap dating site pic's or escort service like pictures on here, asking chemical questions. Some folks are weird.

Per the bold print, family and friends of people who died from getting shocked, that could not help it or prevent it may take offense in your statements.
You can't know something you never learned...

FYI - i'm an ACTUAL electrician that's been in practice for nearly three decades. (i'll refer you to my sign-off line) i'll try to explain it like this, mr. doom-and-gloom. i've stood right next to a guy who got hit by one of these (on a neon sign system up on a movie theater marquee, thanks to the owners who thought they needed to turn it on while we were working on the rest of their marquee power) and it did not kill him. his arm went numb for a couple of hours, but he far from "dead". just discomforted. so for your 'certified safety officer' status, why don't you take it from someone who's been there, and done it, like you expect everyone to do for your refining advice? i'm not sure what's more disingenuous. on one side, you feel the need to falsely tell everyone that they're 'going to be dead" if they try this, or the fact that you're supposedly trying to stop everyone from doing it and then feel the need to challenge me to hold onto 10,000vac and turn it on. you need to pick a side. are you playing your liability game, or not?

that's why i'm on this refining forum. i understand my experience limitations. it's not in the electrical field. it's in refining.

believe it or not, your coming on here to help people with refining is appreciated. your doom-and-gloom attitude about "everyone's going to be dead" is getting really old. myself and many others are getting tired of so many of you working twice as hard to get learning and experimentation stopped, as you are to try to actually guide anyone through the refining learning process.

thank God that good gentlemen like 4metals, frugal refiner, and lou (as well as a few others) are here to actually try to honestly help a few refiners through our learning process. without them, i'm willing to bet that even a few of you doom-and-gloomers would not have gotten as far as you did, had you received the same advice that you keep giving out. i'd ask you to take into account this question, before you put out another "stop what you're doing because i'm smarter than you" post.

would the advice you're about to give, have helped YOU while you were learning, or would it have simply discouraged you to quit?

 

[Master Nater]

I guess someone already did that. with bad results.


so, mister nater, master expert on electricity, please explain..

if not, then you should really be silent and let others warn people of really extremely smart ideas like yours.

none of your videos mean anything to my real-world experience. hence, why i'm here asking about refining. not your book-knowledge of electricity.

 

[Master Nater]

none of your videos mean anything to my real-world experience. hence, why i'm here asking about refining. not your book-knowledge of electricity.

can you explain this video? when i want your electrical advice, i'll meet you on the electrical forum.