Turning Wood into Nitric Acid

In this video I showcase how I made nitric acid from wood while learning how to be a lumberjack.

If you enjoyed the video you can comment, like, and subscribe - I would really appreciate that :)

Also, excuse me for my poor speaking, English is not my native language so I have some trouble with pronunciation, in case you don't understand something there are always subtitles made by me.

This video is for educational and entertainment purposes only, please don't repeat anything you see here.

0:00 Intro
1:50 Making potash
10:10 Making nitric acid
12:10 Making TACN
15:00 Outro

#chemistry
#experiment
#beautiful
#nitricacid
#wood
#cool
#reaction
#fire

[alexglase]

Literally making nitric acid out of wood but doesn’t know how to make a fire properly. That is the most chemistry thing ever. Great video.

[thesunexpress]

I did nearly the exact same thing some 32+ years ago! I found an old US Military field handbook at a library (on a Dutch island no less...) that had a guerilla warfare section to it. It instructed how to make some crude nitrates in wilderness/jungle settings. Did the whole collecting various wood ashes, plant leaf litter etc, boiling down & filtering to concentrate the resulting salt solution(s). Next was to let it stand and allow time for crystallization. En fin, ended up with some dirty nitrates, and mixed with some other "stuff", made some impressive smoke "bombs". 10 years later I found myself graduating from University with a chemical engineering degree. Good times.

[chemistryofquestionablequa]

This is like that "turning Lego into methamphetamine" video. Completely roundabout and impractical, but technically possible and fascinating. Great video!

[jacksparro]

For so many years I have always believed that potash is mashed potatoes. Now I know its some kind of acid. Thank you so much for enlightening me. You are the best!

[archangel]

If you are going to wash a powder with water, put water in the bucket before you pour the powder in so it will reduce the dust!

[patchvonbraun]

Wood ash has next to no nitrates in it! But what it *IS* useful for is the conversion of mixed-nitrates from fermented urine concentrates to potassium nitrate, due to the potassium oxide (and thus hydroxide) fraction of wood ash. That was one of the traditional routes to making KNO3 from "night soil"..

[TitanumIchigo]

For your future hands & back: always hit wood from bottom side (that one which is closer to ground). Axe should go right through with one or two hits, if not sharpen it. Going from top side (closer to sky) is several times harder, but you probably already noticed it. For people who still have problem: branches remnants should be A-shaped not V-shaped if log is placed. Then hit its top.

[garyyokel]

I commend the approach. However, this process is common to making homemade soap "Lye Soap". The best way to leach the potasium salts is to place the ash in a sock-like/teabag and steep in boiling water. Another note, the best wood to use for this process is, traditionally, Oak and other hardwoods. Pine and Spruce are good for other byproducts such as pitch and combustible liquids which require another process altogether.

[MsMondbluemchen]

i love that kind of videos, where you make out of nature materials some chemicals. Transmutation is wonderful. Very good job!

[RGDk]

Wood normally has a lot of moisture in it... So to know the yield, you really need to know just how much water it has. It gets a LOT lighter when it's truely bone-dry.

[wadeodonoghue]

cool vid, very interesting.

a suggestion if you heat up the ash and water mixture I believe you would capture/leech more potash, it will make the filtering go quicker as well as the viscosity generally reduces with temperature.

[link]

You should start with fully burnt white ash. A lot of the stuff you are trying to extract is trapped inside the charcoal grains making it hard to extract. Once the carbon is burnt away you will be left with a fluffy white ash that is much easier to work with.

[kellywilson]

love how you go though all of the miss steps and issues. Makes watching the video fun.

[monosodium-glutamate]

With this knowledge, you could now technically make 2 parts of black powder from wood alone. Find a way to extract sulphur from wood and that's black powder from wood. All in all hilariously impractical, but a great video and fun concept.

[ciprianurea]

Polish Nile Red! I just love your videos!! Keep up the good work, you are amazing!

[gabrielcarrizo]

Im a chemist and I dont really expect to have some potassium nitrate in that wood ashes, just because it decompose at 400°C, further more I expect more to have somo HCl acid when you put sulfuric acid, just because KCl its a lot more stable. So you are probably wondering why when you put the copper it gives you a blue colour ?? This its because it so diluted that didnt give you the complex (CuCl4)-2 thats its green intead you get Cu(H2O)6Cl2

[Biokemist-ok]

I forgot to say that I am a new subscriber here and am very pleased with your very complex machinations. This type of process will be good for when society collapses or the central scrutinizers protect us from ourselves and stop us from buying any chemicals....

[vikramkrishnan]

If you want to go down the natural nitrate sources, bird droppings are a great way of getting started

[drewniakma]

These vids keep getting better and crazier. Keep it up, cause they're awesome. 🙀🙀🙀

[supersophisticated]

Sulfuric acid is also producable from electrolysis, which I think could use ingredients only from the potash and some kind of sulfur compound.