Storing nitric acid

[Elemental]

Acids cabinets in a lab setting have ventilation to outside/fume hood to help with fume removal. You'll often find the acid cabinet right beneath the fume hood so the vent tube can be ran into the fume hood. Even in a lab setting nitric acid is stored separately from other acids. While nitric acid and hydrochloric acid can be stored in the same corrosive storage cabinet, they must have separate drip trays because, if they combine, they will form chlorine and nitrosyl chloride gases—both of which are toxic and corrosive.

Of course new acid cabinets are expensive (for a reason), but it wouldn't be too hard to DIY one with a metal cabinet and some acid resistant paint (or a small PVC plastic garden cabinet/shed), drip trays, and some PVC piping for a vent tube. Another option is to look for used acid cabinets. My father managed to find a small four gallon acid cabinet for less the 50 bucks which I'll be using shortly.

Elemental

 

[Jado]

Thanks for the help guys just one more question can nitric and muriatic be stored together?

Correct answer depends on your local laws. General “rule of thumb” for oxidizers for most law enforcement is any amount that wouldn’t look out of place under the kitchen sink is exempt (and therefore go ahead, but store in proper containers with spill containment provisions) and any greater amount deserves a call to the correct authorities. Legally (commercial/industrial) they must be stored in separate cabinets with a reasonable distance between.

 

[orvi]

Hello.
My idea is to put a piece of steel nearby the storage place. It is a indicator. If it is a slightest leakage, the steel will get rusty in one night.

If it is stored inside without setting the bottles in the vented storage/fumehood, no matter what standard container/lid you use, hydrochloric will leak out to some extent.
We usually purchase nitric 65% in 1 L amber glass bottles with plastic lids (PE bottom) - this is very convenient setting and last 2 years minimum (the lid, they never stayed unused for longer).
But for the hydrochloric, it is a nightmare... PE plastic bottles with plastic cap, which can hold just a tiny bit of pressure. Stuff is 35% and man... It leak madly. Usually we pool the 1 L plastic bottles to empty 2,5 L amber glass bottles capped with PTFE lined plastic caps.

Nitric is relatively OK in terms of leakage "speed", but hydrochloric - most importantly above azeotropic (more than 18-20%) - will gas out practically immediately from plastic containers.
Ammonia is the winner for me, as it tends to inflate the plastic bottles and escape out. And God bless you if you have any hydrochloric/nitric container in less than 10 m radius White apocalypse

If you can, store the chemicals safely outside the house. Conveniently in some plastic box under the roof of the house etc... Or in some bin-like container that prevent rainfall to get in.


One good story was from like 10 years ago. One person purchased 1/2 L plastic bottle of HCl (31%) for testing rocks. Here, in the ordinary public store, you can purchase 1/2 L or 1 L bottles of technical 30-33% HCl for cleaning purposes etc... But one company selling it that time just neglected chemistry at all and put the HCl to classical PET bottles. I don´t know how the sane person could do this, but I think he/she was very happy about him/herself - because the PET bottles had SAFETY CAPS What could go wrong... Person buying the bottle had no clue that the container is completely improper for this chemical. And also weren´t aware that HCl shouldn´t be stored like this. Big bad from both sides of equation.
Long story short - bottle was sitting nicely in the chemical storage steel locker in the room with computers, microscopes and many other machines. During Christmas, bottle started to disintegrate, leaked whole half liter of stuff inside the steel cabinet. HCl leaked from the bottom of the cabinet to the floor (lino) and started doing it´s thing on everything metallic :/
Employees recognized this disaster maybe after 7-9 days. HCl was completely evaporated from the floor, soaked into the concrete walls - heavy fall of the cement etc... And of course, all microscopes and computers were damaged badly. Some going straight to trash. Steel cabined fell to the ground as one of the legs gets eaten that much it tipped over. All chemicals inside mangled and many bottles cracked. But thankfully nothing too dangerous were inside.
Company selling the HCl and also H2O2 and H2SO4 in these bottles was sued by many people and authorities shortly after (there were "surprisingly" many others who encountered similar surprise :/ )