Making Potassium Nitrate: Forbidden Chemistry part 1 #chemistry #chemical

Making black powder used to be a "rite of passage" for boys when I was growing up in the early 1960s. These days, you would be arrested. We got our black powder formulas from encyclopedias and the KNO3 and "flowers of sulfur" from drug stores. It was my inspiration for becoming a chemist later!

As a chemist who owns his own very well equipped lab. Potassium nitrate is an awesome compound! Of course, like many other things,you can use it to make energetic compounds,however, potassium nitrate has many, many more applications that is useful in the lab, then making boom powder. We use it for many oxidation reactions including what I mainly use it for is drying certain gasses because it is completely recoverable and inexpensive. it's pretty sad when you have to put all these disclaimers in your videos simply because of the paranoia. You keep on doing chemistry and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.. Just be safe and don't make energetic compounds.😊

I was making potassium nitrate over 45 years ago when I was just 13 years old. I’m now a chemical engineer. I specialized in combustion.

Better method: potassium carbonate and calcium nitrate. The calcium will precipitate as calcium carbonate leaving the potassium nitrate in solution with only a trace of calcium in the solution.

9:38, OMG, that casserole dish just reactivated so many dormant memories from my childhood in the '90s. My mom had that exact same set. The floral pattern, the shape and contours of the handles, all the same. Good memories. LOTS of tuna casseroles were made in them!

Tip for amateur chemists: This applies to the chemistry you are doing here, but is useful across the board for the home chemists out there. You can double up or triple up on the coffee filters to enhance your filtration, if you are having issues with finer particulate coming through. You can use as many as you want, but at some point its diminishing returns. Your filter will clog easier, and it will be a slower filtration especially if you are doing gravity filtration. It may be wise to filter the first time with 1 or 2 coffee filters, then refilter it with 3 - 10 filters depending on what your application is and how clean you want our solution. The more filters you use, the more "filter mass" you have and more of your solution gets absorbed into the filter. To combat this presoak your filters with whatever your solvent is, which is distilled water in this case, and add a little after your filtration is done to rinse your filters of your desired compound. Now if thats not doing it for you, let me introduce you the "Charmin plug" method. Get a regular plastic funnel with the spout diameter about 0.5'' to 1'' and take a square of paper towel or 2-3 squares of toilet paper (hence the name Charmin, as in the toilet paper brand Charmin, in Charmin plug) and fold it several times so its about 1 to 2" in length, then roll it up as tight as possible to make a tight fit into the spout of your funnel. Your final plug should slightly resemble a 9mm bullet (casing and all). and be about 1'' to 2'' by whatever the diameter of your filter's spout is. If you are not working with a lot of solution go ahead and cut this plug in half so it's 0.5'' to 1'' by whatever diameter. Your filtration will be really slow. Like 1 drip every 5 seconds. However this is adjustable with the size of the plug and how tight you pack it in the filter spout. Since your funnel spout tapers or becomes narrower as it gets to the bottom, you can pack it in tighter and make it slower or not so tight and leave it a little bit loose to filter faster (but not as clean). A good filter in almost all applications I've ever used (and that is alot) is about 1 drip per second. Thats not to awful slow and its still a crystal clear solution in most cases. Make sure your glassware and funnel is good and clean before you begin or you have just done this process for nothing.

You can also dry your CaCl2 by drying in the oven. Then you can use it to extract moisture again as drying agent can be recycled endless 😊 just use heat resistant plastics or glass because Calcium cloride can be nasty to metal surface and stain them

I've recovered a little over 12kg of very pure KNO3 from my silver refining. I use it to make more HNO3 that's fed back into the refining. I did do a little test last year with some Potassium Carbonate I had available. I found it did a great job of converting the calcium nitrate and since it made calcium carbonate which is highly insoluble in water it filtered out VERY clear. And since calcium carbonate in less soluble in hot water than in cold a filtering when near boiling really cleared it all up. The KNO3 crystals that formed were beautiful and they were incredibly easy to wash off. I also found that using the wash water to dissolve the next batch instead of adding plain water improved my yields by around 10%.

Just a side note from a german chemist: the filter funnel you use is called Büchner funnel, not Buckner. The closest rendering in English would be „Buechner“. This funnel was invented by the german chemist Ernst Büchner in 1888.

quick side note, for a really good penetrating oil if you mix 50/50 acetone and automatic transmission fluid in a sprayer it works like a charm

You're an artist, Mr White. This is art! -Jessie

While KNO3 is easy to obtain in most areas (stump remover, etc) this is an awesome video to see how to make it if its NOT readily available. Excellent! I am glad I came across this video\channel. Subbed!

I wouldn't discard the first decant solution, which is mainly calcium chloride in solution. I would evaporate that to recover the very slightly impure calcium chloride, which I wouldn't use for chemistry but would use as a desiccant or deicer. Impurities remaining from the calcium nitrate fertilizer can be discounted for that use. I'd also use filter paper discs in the Buchner funnel to save any potassium nitrate crystals from falling thru cuz some of those crystals could easily be small enough to drop thru the sieve of the funnel. In the desiccating chamber if instead of placing the calcium chloride on the floor of the interior bucket, you suspend it above the floor in a sieve, then calcium chloride which gets wet falls thru (from sieve to bucket floor) in solution, and what stays in the sieve stays relatively dry. Later, heat the calcium chloride from the sieve to drive off excess moisture, and evaporate the fluid at the bottom of the bucket to recover the calcium chloride. Store all your calcium chloride in glass jars with good screw tops and your loss-rate for the calcium chloride will be near zero (never have to buy another plastic bag of the stuff). Finally, I wish you had weighed the product and reported the yield. It is true that any way you look at it, this potassium nitrate is cheap, but a little labor intensive. If the yield is poor you might advocate for alternative reactions, eg the one I saw mentioned below in the comments.

I'm looking forward to more of these videos

Good stuff Mr. Omegageek! Thank you!

Thanks Mike, you're a damn good teacher!

Mason jars hurricane candles coffee pots etcetera also work in a pinch as long as it's glass products that were made to be safe when heated or exposed to heat 7:33

Awesome info 💯 thanks

I live in the UK. I probably broke the law just by watching the video. We're not allowed to have fun things here, by law.

Thank you for the effort in producing this video (from Australia)