Making Nitric Acid From Air (DIY Birkeland-Eyde Reactor)
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- čas přidán 1. 08. 2020
- Finally done this project.
Yes I am aware that I put NH3NO3 instead of NH4NO3. I am sorry
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To explain the kilo of Nitrocellulose further, I am well aware of the problems that may arise with the large scale deflagration regarding DDT. For this reason, the lump pile of Nitrocellulose would be heavily compressed, meaning less oxygen present at any given time in the fireball, and a longer, less "explosive" burn.
UPDATE: Actually no. That is bad idea. Nitrocellulose will NOT be compressed.
Fantastic! Real sad about the glassware... I totally get the feeling about cleaning it up, but glad you got it working!
I know im randomly asking but does anyone know of a method to log back into an instagram account??
I was stupid lost the account password. I appreciate any tips you can give me.
@Will O Glassware is not illegal, no
Yellow chem is the best chem
Oh shit its the aussie clandestine GOAT! 😂😂😂
Oh snap! Tom speaks........
Saturday: NurdRage - How to make nitric acid.
Sunday: DBX - How to make nitric acid... From air.
This guy took it a bit further even.. czcams.com/video/2RRqIv4SoLg/video.html
Way further!!!
Waaaaaay further!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaay further.
Monday: How to make air... From nothingness
Two ideas that might help increase the captured yeild.
1) DIY nano bubbler: use an Air stone inside a pipe through which water is pumped. Water speeding up as it passes around the air stone quickly rips tiny nano sized bubbles off the air stone, not only will stay in solution longer, but they have much greater surface area helping increase the amount absorbed into the water.
2) periodically adding Ammonia to keep the ph close to 7 might help increase the yeild.
NurdRage, SyroPyro, Cody and NileRed have some up and coming competition. Well spoken video and excellent demonstration
very well done video - thanks for producing it!
thank you VERY much for this detailed explaination. the equipment descriptions were exactly what was missing from every other video out there.
Probably my favourite video on youtube for science related videos.
Great work, the process of making the ammonium nitrate is really interesting.
Good job on the video!! Broken down nicely and explained well!! Thank you!!
Superb video ! Kudos for your persistence
Guys, since over in my country I dont get nitric acid, this video helps me a lot.
Glad to help
Nice! A couple of grams for a transformer is neat. I had tubes destroyed when I made makeshift Aqua Regias (Magnesium Nitrate 200 g) in 300 ml of Hydrochloric acid 31 percent at 75 degrees C. Never give up. The history of the suitable Birkeland-Eyde reactor was fascinating.
The Birkeland-Eyde process was the first (iirc) that showed up when a call to develop synthetic nitrates was made in the late nineteenth century by people such as William Crookes, which surprised me when I found out about it, on account that I knew Crookes as the inventor of the first cathode ray tube.
While it's nowhere near as efficient as other methods, I think it really shines for it's simplicity. I really want to try it out myself at some point.
Wow, that was brilliant, thanks for sharing
This helps SO much! Thank you!
"That's kind of how I feel right now"
I know that feel bro
I sympathize with this a lot man. Sorry about the apparatus. I’ve broken a lot of glass in the 3 years I’ve been doing this. It is always frustrating. Great video though!
at uni the lab i worked at was giving away a bunch of glass equipment that didn't fit in the lab, the professor had a shopping problem lol. i was 19 seeing who wanted 1 liter flasks in other labs(nobody wanted it) , round bottom flasks, and even new unopened containers of chemicals like octonol. the octonol, i just tossed in the dumpster because i was clean out the back of the lab, it was 9pm and wanted to just go home already. i did take a few flasks home with me and chemicals too, thinking maybe i could sell it, or shoot at it at the ranch, the chemicals I ended up having stolen when i had my stuff in a storage unit. and the flasks were broken. the last glass i had was a 3 hole flask like yours, same size. it finally broke, trying to move into the 2nd floor of my apartment. it was in a on a stack of boxes going upstairs and it fell off and broke. i didnt care at the time, a few years later now, im wanting to start a few experiments like u are, and i kick myself because alot of stuff was broken and wasted and there was soo many cool things just tossed in the dumpster because i just wanted to go home already to play video games lol
Super! Thank you very much!
Fantastic vid
Sweet channel!
Dude I bought a soxilet extractor 50 bucks on ebay went to use it for the first time. When I was assembling it I snapped off the drain arm. I sat looking at what I did for like ten minutes
Ionize, not pyrolyze, I believe is the word you want.
Excellent video, thank-you.
very cool
I think your yield is excellent factoring in the set up. I can imagine if somehow you were given a substantial sum of money into equipment and research, you would be able to get a better yield, while doing it from home :D
Wiktor Dudek yeah, I would like to throw some serious electromagnets on to control the plasma’s shape but that would likely cost more than the current project did.
I m Also working on this project ☺️
Just wanted to make my own transformer for better arcing and an oxygen generator for better production of nitric acid
Please 🥺 support my channel too 🙏🙏🙏 we all r science lovers
Awesome video!!! You bring complicated nitric acid production to such a simple lvl within this diy... keep up the vids man!! sub diserved! This does 'spark' a question in my mind tho. I've seen plenty of plasma electric pocket lighters for very cheap and i wonder if they could be used for this type of setup as well? Can i make the same acid with the lighters as well?
You could use a plasma lighter to make NOx in a small Birkeland-Eyde, but it would only be operating at a fraction of the power (arc lighter current is only like 5 mA max). I would guess that it would take several minutes of arcing to see NO2 form even in a 500mL vessel. Those lighters also face battery and driver overheating problems which typically limit their continuous use to less than a minute. A much better and equally cheap alternative would be to buy a 300W ZVS driver and a flyback transformer (ones from old CRTs work fine). That could be run nonstop at much higher power and with better arc control than an arc lighter.
Great project. I am looking at building a solar powered version of this system to make calcium nitrate fertilizer. My vision is a couple solar panels, bubbling away into some blue plastic barrels on a farm, making the farms entire nitrate need. daily production is small, but added up over a year and we got some big amounts...
Sounds like a cool project! With a reactor just slightly modified from this, you could easily reach efficiencies around 20 kWh per kilo of nitrate. With a few square meters of panels, you could make several kilos of CAN a month.
You need to increase the pressure in the spark jar to increase the yield
I am really struggling to form the brown gas in my reactor but the void space in my arc area is much smaller, I did notice some form and it quickly went away. I let it run for about 5 hours and the water was not even slightly acidic. Just got brown gas, seems to need a long arc and fairly low flow rate.
Good stuff, here's a comment for the algorithm. Sucks what happened to your glassware though.
if left running with this setup, whats the max percentage purity of nitric acid reasonably expected?
Classic. I've never ever once heard something like this in all these scienc videos. 11.40 ,,, " It just fucks off into the atmosphere " 😲
Sounds like a one night stand... 😂😂😂
10:33 Ammonium nitrate in solution is yellow. So that's the correct color you are getting here and it's a good indicator, that it works.
Cool proyect! susbcribed
PTFE tubing can be used without worry.. as it is chemically resistant to nitric acid. It’s also common since it’s now used in 3d printers as a filament guide.
That’s what I used towards the end of the video. EPDM tubing also works without any signs of degradation.
I have a question. I've read that nitrocellulose was used as a high explosive as a replacement for black powder way way back in the day. If nitrocellulose is made with red fuming nitric acid and highly concentrated sulfuric acid, dried and then packed into a hole drilled into a rock would it detonate?
It's still used in various formulations for almost all firearms today. With good confinement, like in a borehole NC can detonate. It would be best to use a blasting cap to insure that it does rather than deflagrating.
incredible...smart kid... Max Hodak...one of the smartest people I know...work w him on some projects...make Woolly Mammoths? No limit to what you can do...
I am a bit worried about the flask you are doing the reaction in, check 5:05 . The arc kinda licks the top of the flask everytime it goes up. That gives me flashbacks of when Nilered did some plasma experiments with his beakers in a microwave with a similar situation and it introduced stress into his beakers which made them crack randomly. Be extra careful with what you use the flask with next, but your flask broke so owell, its always sad to see someones glassware brake. I accidentally broke a condenser and an additionfunnel once at the same time while taking apart a distillation setup. Also the water you bubbled the NO2 in could be better if you added Hydrogen Peroxide which increases it efficiency. Otherwise, great video
P-α3 Yeah I figured the sporadic heat treatment from the plasma wouldn’t help the situation one bit. At some point I decided the investment was for the reactor, not a future 3-neck so that’s when I got the middle neck epoxied.
@@DBXLabs
The bigger the scale of the reactor the more efficient it is.
I recommend using a large steel container, water cooled electrodes and a hefty transformer for higher efficiencies.
DC works better than AC actually, if you can find a high voltage DC power source use that.
Also, amps and surface area are your friend. That’s why they used magnets to spin that plasma around.
Can you explain how did you make this electric line?
You should put the beaker of water where the gas dissolved into an icebath or may be fridge because gases dissolve well at lower temperature and high pressure.
You can build your reactor from an bucket if you isulate it inside with an mix of plaster of paris and sand.
2:52
> it was widely used commercially
Saddest thing: it wasn't. Birkeland-Eyde process was around for relatively short time, patented around 1900 and then Fritz Habor invented his own process and the only one plant with Birkeland-Eyde process that was built was shut down before the start of WW2. Nevertheless, I think it's a really cool process, maybe it was inefficient because the electricity back then wasn't cheap enough.
Cool video! When you calculate the power usage, is that the actual measured usage or the max rating of the transformer? If you were actually able to deposit 225W in your vessel I think it would become VERY hot in operation.
The power was calculated just based on total energy expense. I can't imagine that any more than a couple tens of watts were converted to heat in the reactor itself. The glass only got up to around 100C.
So yeah, just the transformer rating.
The best stuff for sealing which i use in electronics is a silicone glue used in crafts it doesn't use acetic acid to cure so is not corrosion.
Nice video,but you should use GTO wire,which is insulated for 5,10 or 15 kV instead of 300V alligator clip wires.
Have you tried Fractional distillation for this product to enhance focus and does it work
bilal ammar I probably could try fractional distillation to get a better idea of the final acid concentration, but it isn’t really necessary in distilling Red Fuming Nitric Acid. Since the Ammonium Nitrate is anhydrous and the sulfuric acid is at 98%, the product distillate is always right around 100% concentration in all fractions.
good luck
My friend. But I would expect that if you had Fractional distillation of your dilute yield, you 💐would have more ammonium nitrate
How high was your electricity bill 😂. How much did it cost per gram in your power
Awesome setup and vid man sorry about the glassware though, a real shame
I'm thinking of attempting this using dc current from what I read that actually can improve efficiency I'll let u know how my zvs setup works
Alek Escalante Cool! From what I’ve read, DC improved yield significantly in combination with plasma manipulation via magnets/electromagnets. You might want to try that out.
@@DBXLabs you should read about the Schönherr Stove. Long pipe bottom an electrode top an electrode with an handel. Compressed air inlett on the bottem. The electodes are pulled apart with the compressed air inlett open. The arc looks like an corkscrew. In industrial dimensions they had 5,5% effezienze. Fritz Haber wrote (he done bevor ammonia synthesis some experiments on electrochemistry) if the reaction chamber would be from metal (dont know how he wanted to prefent an short cut for current) The effizenzie would be much highter because better cooling of the NO gas. with his small aperatur he had 7% effizenie.
F in the chat for the glassware bro. Just bought a chem set and i broke my thermometer whithin 10 seconds of owning it. Know how it feels. I would buy your patron but i have a thermometer to buy😅
Never feel bad about not supporting. That’s for a very specific type of person.
Insane waste of energy, but still alright for an interesting experiment.
Here you have two reasons for the inefficiency: first reason of course, is your arc, that is not optimized to produce a maximum of NO2 - what is hard to manage indeed.
The second inefficieny reason is your method to catch the NO2. You could have done much better by using a long cylinder filled with water and CaCO3 (Chalk or marble) and bubble the gas to the ground of that cylinder.
So the gas can react with the chalk all the way up to form Calcium nitrate. That was also be done in the history for that process.
So I guess you would get a much better yield of HNO3 in the end.
But anyway, it's just an experiment to see what's possible, but as long as someone has access to any nitrate fertilizer, that would be much cheaper. Or as someone may have access to unused solar or windpower, so that you have a way here to convert free energy into some chemical energy, the easy way. But I believe, electrolysis of chloride into ClO3 is still a more efficient way for that, but it needs more maintaining therefore and equipment on the other hand.
Electrolytic hydrogen for fertilizer production has shitty marginal returns on capital.
Wow 😍😍😍😍😍
Would you get more nitric acid into the water solution if you bubbled it through the vortexed water?
Yes, you definitely would.
@@DBXLabs thanks for the quick reply.
Hey is the stir bar black from liquid sodium metal or any other elemental alkali? I did the nerdrage technique for making sodium in an oil solution and many of mine look like like that now hahaha! I got a heap of neon sign transformers and flybacks and kinda wanna make a multi stage version of this using multiple sources of plasma generation in the path the gas travels
You are correct. Many of my stirs are on their last legs thanks to the menthol catalyzed magnesium reduction method. In regards to making a Birkeland-Eyde, I’d suggest you read into the steps of oxidation that occur. The goal that isn’t achieved in this video is to get the most amount of air through the arc over the shortest duration. The longer fixated air remains superheated, the more NO converts back to diatomic nitrogen and oxygen instead of oxidizing to NO2. This also means that running air through arcs in “series” will likely have rapidly diminishing returns as NO is destroyed in consecutive arcs.
@@DBXLabs Hahaha I knew it about the sodium, I made the oil heater from an old hairdryer element and a Variac so my setup was sketchy to say the least xD. Also used borneol like he suggested in his update video. Yielded about 10 grams can't say the percentage as it was contaminated with magnesium and I didn't clean it well but it was great fun throwing it in water but sadly have yet to use it for any actual purpose other then having the fun of making it with random stuff in my garage actually working. Also thanks for letting me know your opinion on my potential setup! I might be able to rig up some system that utilises my compressor but I don't have experience with high pressure systems so I will probably not attempt it. Maybe a longer Jacobs ladder would be an idea as the arc moves up with the air so the same air remains in contact with the plasma maybe? I have a neon supply that has 2 outputs and I was thinking making the setup 2 arcs in the same container but I imagine I would need quite a big one for heat dissipation.
If you take a portable medical oxygen concentrator open it up and tap into where it vents the nitrogen you can get a better ratio in your arc chamber also making multi sealed chambers for the water gives greater time and surface area to extract the acid IE a tube too the bottom then a tube at the top of the first that then goes to the bottom of the second and so on.
Hi! Try to use a water glass based compounds. It is insensitive for acids. You can prepare it by mixing water glas with a some filler, for example asbestos powder, instead of using plumber compounds.
You’re definitely right that using plumbing putty was a design flaw, and in more recent iterations I have been machining 24/40 electrode feed-throughs out of PTFE. I also scrapped the part of this design where both are fed through the same neck. My concerns in using a sodium silicate based sealant would be troubles in HV insulating, and difficulties removing a somewhat cemented seal.
Also I’ll pass on asbestos
What is the concentration of the nitric acid from the first process
I've been able to get it up to about 10% before I lose large amounts of NO2 due to its lower absorption rate in acid.
You have higher yield when you build your stove Schönherr style. But its more complikatet because i think you need an real compressor.
what power supply do you use?
When I heated 500ml of clean 38% battery acid to 380 deg C, it never boiled, it only steamed. Why is that? I ended up with 190ml of 94.5% H2SO4. Also, 1.285g per ml on the lable equates to 70.2% acid, not 38%. I don't understand why that is. Can you please explain? I did this outside on a hotplate and had no foil covering the beaker.
Wy dint it work whit normal glass? If I take a mason jar and then insulate it with tubing would it work?
Should work with a mason jar, but expect it to get quite hot (>100C) borosilicate is better suited for the thermal gradient you can get
could you possibly boil down the product from the nitric acid apparatus to make it more concentrated ?
Yes, you can. You could do this all the way until you've concentrated to the azeotrope with water (~68%) however at that point and even for a while beforehand you would be losing a great deal of nitric acid as both it and water leave the system, boiling away in similar proportions.
Buddhafollower by directly feeding the NO2 into water, you could probably make it to around 20% before losing a massive percentage of NO2 since it’s solubility rapidly decreases as acidity increases. A method of further concentration is almost certainly needed for any practical application of the acid.
If you don’t need to directly make the acid and are instead looking to maximize yield of the nitrate anion, feeding the NO2 into an excess of ammonium hydroxide solution is the best way to go about that
the birkeland eyde reactor can be made 10x more efficient by spinning the arc either with spinning magnets or an air vortex
How would you compress it and make Liquid Nitrogen?
It dissolved, not compressed
What is the purity of this acid ?
I have an idea to increase electrical efficiency of this setup ..
NST or Any Transformer or smps is less efficient to generate high voltage Arc because of high current in primary winding that cause heat instead of any High voltage supply i think it's great idea to boost 220 volt Ac using Capacitor voltage dubbler Circuit using few Polly caps and arc with rotating plats as electrodes or arc in side Ring type magnet as Anode ( with cooling ) and cathode shaft in the middle so arc will rotate automatically because of Loranz force on charge just like magnetron or just use corona instead of direct arc if it work may be Heated air make it more efficient not sure .
Will corona discharge work instead of short circuit arc ~
Unfortunately that wouldn’t work. Where a hot plasma arc produces substantial amounts of both NO2 and Ozone, the only apparent product of corona discharge is ozone.
It is possible to get the image of the device
مشور مشور ?what Device
Try using a grid electrode. Did you factor in what hydrate the ammonium nitrate is?
You might try dissolving the NO2 directly in ammonia, to prevent loss of the gas to atmosphere
I thought about using ammonia instead of water but I couldn’t think of a way to keep the ammonia from just leaving the solution over time. The ammonium nitrate doesn’t really form hydrates, it more just absorbs water into its crystal structure until it “melts.” Any of this water was not present after the baking in the oven.
@@DBXLabs maybe you could also try continuously spraying water inside the reactor. The water mist would dissolve all of the liquid quickly. It would also cool the reactor.
To do this you would just need a small water pump and some sort of nozzle. Maybe from a spray bottle or something.
I have a microwave transformer
I'm having a hard time to figure how to use it
It keeps overheating and the spark is so small
Koukou Zee yeah MOTs are no joke. They WILL kill before you hit the ground. I suggest you make sure you are using the secondary output and not just the sensory outputs typically hooked into the secondary circuit. Typically, there’s only one secondary output which will provide 2100VAC in series with the core of the transformer. Be safe, there’s lots of tutorial videos on MOTs on CZcams.
75$ for a 500ml 3 outlet glass reactor globe? woah. Got mine for 28$ CAD on ebay!
75 is including the hose adapters but yeah it wasn't a cheap 3 neck for sure
Could you use one of those globes that you can put your hand on and the plasma will go to your hand...I forget what they are called
How loud is the reactor?
The hated ones only thing that makes noise is the arc traveling up the wires and it’s quieter than a running microwave.
Why didn't you keep the start nitric acid and concentrated It by distillation?
welcome to the watchlist lads
Hello, could you explain why you put it in the oven, rather than just distilling it? Is it to remove all of the water? Also, why do you add ammonia to your solution? Just trying to understand a bit more. Please and thanks!
Also what concentration is your H2SO4? And where did you happen to get it? Please and thanks again
Okay i get know you put it in the oven to get the anhydrous ammonium nitrate
Now*
Can I use one of these cheap china higvoltage generators for this?
You’ll get ozone but the arc isn’t hot enough to form NO
I've always wanted to try this in ozone gas it has an extra oxygen molecule
Why don't you concentrate the acid by keeping on bubbling it through water?
"and that just fucks off into the atmosphere"
The atmosphere is nature's bin after all
8:40 what are those bugs chilling in the electrical connection lol
They were sleeping
what is the efficiency if you use, lets say 50% hydrogen peroxide/water solution instead of just water
Can’t say I know what it would be but it could likely eliminate the need for a two stage bubbling system following the reaction. I likely lost some NOx since in the dissolution of NO2 into water, NO2 is generated (nitrous acid decomposition) and I’m sure the H2O2 could pick all that up.
Interesting! But not a good idea in Germany, Bavaria. Here a kilowatt hour costs 35 eurocents (40 us-cents) xD
I wonder why Senkuu from Dr. Stone (Anime) didn't try this. But excellent video, you have yourself a new subscriber
He does in the manga later on so it will be if they finish the anime ;)
@@Nielsquake0 I believe that senku used the Ostwald process in the manga thus requiring platinum. But the only explanation I could think of that senku didn't use this process is inefficiency or plot reasons.
@@typhoon743 later on he does I don't wanna spoil it but it's an emergency situation at sea he used this method long after getting the Ostwald process going. The manga gets kinda insane ish though hahaha
@@Nielsquake0 if you're speaking of treasure island I think that's where he first used the Ostwald process. I'm don't remember if he changed processes in the subsequent arcs. I've read the whole manga though and indeed does get insane (In a great way)
@@typhoon743 well maybe the part I read it was just short story they did after the ending. It's a little continuation where senku ends up in the middle of the ocean. The reason I was looking to do this myself is from reading about it in Dr stone hahahaha
How long does it take to be concentrated too ?
Wodiy Diy several days in my setup
@@DBXLabs The concentration ratio is low, the method is not suitable for making a large amount ?
Wodiy Diy the concentration starts to plateau around 30% as NO2 has a harder time dissolving in acid than water. That’s why keeping a low concentration is good for production efficiency.
@@DBXLabs How to raise concentration ؟
thank you very much .
If you were to feed pure o2 into it what would happen
Depending on the flow rate, you might produce a small amount of ozone with no other products. Ozone is destroyed in high temperature plasmas, so this would be far less efficient production than in nonthermal plasmas or dielectric barrier discharge.
For a better arc. Could you not put a steel screen into a glass container and run it in amicrowave. And force air (nitrogen) through the screen.
You could, but it wouldn’t be as simple as that in design. A single piece of steel screen wouldn’t do much besides heat up in a microwave, as arcing occurs due to induced potentials between conductors in the EM field. Basically, you would need two closely spaced screens to form an arc which would then have plasma reinforced by the microwave. As you might expect, that plasma would become very hot and without magnetic confinement it would rapidly rise up to the top of the glass vessel and wreak havoc on any borosilicate. Once the plasma forms, there’s no need for it to remain between the sheets, since the EM field does just as good of a job flowing current around.
wouldn't an easy way of making Nitrogen Dioxide be to get a pressurized canister of nitrous oxide and a small bottle of oxygen and to combine it slowly in a small pressure chamber, then vent the Nitrogen dioxide which is pressurized into water to make the acid? If the nitrous oxide reacts with oxygen?
Thunderstorm affects the production you mean?
The thunderstorm destroyed the reaction vessel, requiring a complete restart of production
لو سمحت كيفه احصل على جهد عالي
Yo maybe you’ll know, what’s the banned piece of glassware that’s just prefect for making lsd? Maybe other drugs but I heard there’s a piece of glassware banned because it’s basically perfect for the task.
Seeing your three necked one reminds me of it, making me think “yeah it’s not banned”😂
In an unrelated note, safrole…
I’ve seen an artist who makes them in mini form as pendants. Rope runs through the obvious arms.
Would be cool to react something inside of it, or fill it with bromine
You can try increasing the yield by using Hydrogen Peroxide instead of water, submerged in an ice bath.
Best way I found to purify ammonium nitrate was by successive filtrations and recrystalization in the freezer. If you heat it too much you will decompose it into nitrous oxide. Which is fine if you want a laughing gas party.ha
So i do wonder, would using laughing gas (already partially oxidized nitrogen) and oxygen maybe give a better yield?
That would be interesting to test. I can only assume it would.
@@DBXLabs Another thing i keep wondering about is ozone and ammonia. Extractions&Ire did one about it, but as was pointed out, you actually need to add some KOH or something to really keep the pH low during the process, also apparently MgO can serve as a catalyst, going by a paper i found on that.
Another thing is, i read on a ozone generator manufacturer, that with ozone concentration is kinda diffcult to get high in water. However now there are actually electrolytic ozone generators that work with water and can get up to 30% ozone in solution, which is pretty crazy.
Just food for thought.
XXX M 30% in water? That’s really impressive
@@DBXLabs Under ideal circumstances, and there is only very few manufacturers from what i found. But one austrian firm makes ones small enough that you can just clamp it into a 1/2" pipe, so actually ideal size for a lab setting.
no idea on the pricing tho, they donßt say on the page.
@@xxxm981 Using laughing gas requires NO2 in synthesis steps, so you're effectively making N2O2 to destroy it again. Pointless.
for best results add oxygen to the gas coming from the reactor
14:03
NH3NO3
ah yes
Aw shit
@@DBXLabsAmmonia nitrate :D
Why everyone's makes a Jacob ladder on their Bikerland-Eyde reactors? it makes no sense to have the arc running up like that. What you need for best efficiency is to have the air heated and then cooled very fast, that's why in the real process they used magnets to spread the arc in a disc like pattern and passed air thorough it at very high rates quickly cooling it, a Jacob's ladder works because the hot air rises and carries with it the arc thus actually increasing the contact time and decreasing the flow rate of air thorough the arc, Not only that but having the arc grow and strike again and again puts strain on your power supply lowering the lifetime unnecessarily because NST aren't designed to be going open circuit and then short circuit many times a second. Just have the arc be the largest you can while remaining stable, your yield will increase and your power supply will last longer. Also add an "recombination vessel" after your reactor, it takes some time for the NO and O2 to react and turn into NO2 i didn't believed this to have a great effect but after i added a 10L water bottle to my setup between the arc reactor and the absorption vessel my yield and specially the highest concentration increased a lot, the recombination vessel would look very red and that's a good thing. I made a bit more than 2L of 45% HNO3 in about a month with a 15Kv NST but im sure that with a custom made transformer for higher current and power and a reactor like the ones used in the real process the yield could be increased many times. My absorption reactor was made out of pvc pipe in a square like helical pattern so the contact time was the longest without having to have tall water column that my air pump would have struggled with.
Because it’s hard to fit through the neck?
Not impossible, fit a thin loop and adjust it with hooks through the other holes maybe?
The only chemistry I’ve done is make ferric chloride, this might be a fun stepping stone toward… safrole
@@lindboknifeandtool You can use a 1 gallon glass pickle jar. That's what I used for my very first arc reactor, for electrodes I used 1/8 316L stainless wire from SMAW welding electrodes they are cheap, you only have to remove the flux then sharpen them so the arc its stable at the every end of the electrodes. To get the longest arc you have to experiment a bit but it will be always longer than the minimum distance it can self start, you have to make some kind of jacob's ladder so the arc starts then it rises but instead of rising too much growing so large that it cuts and starts again at the bottom it should get stuck at the end of the ladder therefore the sharpened electrodes, the top of the ladder and were the arc burns should not be higher than half the pickle jar else the heat will be too concentrated on the top (technically the bottom) of the jar and shatter.
To seal the jar I used a piece of thick glass (about 8mm) plastics aren't a good choice because they become wet with nitric acid generated from the air humidity and cause arc tracking, I drilled holes for the air input and output as well for the electrodes with diamond drill bits and glued the glass to the mouth of the jar with RTV silicone, the hole for the electrodes should be relatively snug and were sealed/glued with UV cure adhesive, it held well. This setup worked pretty well for a couple of months working 24/7, I stopped the reactor because I needed the NST for something else. It made about 4 liters of 40% hno3 in total.
If you don't have experience with HV better learn that first because the arc currents needed to get an usable amounts of HNO3 are quite dangerous.
00:01 Jacob ladder
Don't feel bad I just broke a $500 gas trap doing something really stupid it's almost irreplaceable it's probably 80 years old and it was beautiful I doubt that in my lifetime I will ever find another one like it however I do have a second one that is closed and form
A full kilo? Sign me the fuck up