{"id":218,"date":"2016-11-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-17T23:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/?p=218"},"modified":"2025-06-01T20:01:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T20:01:20","slug":"nitric-acid-from-air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/2016\/11\/18\/nitric-acid-from-air\/","title":{"rendered":"Nitric acid from air"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In need of some nitric acid and lacking the required chemicals I found out about the Birkeland\u2013Eyde process<\/span><\/a>.
By creating a high voltage arc in normal air a few chemical reactions occur because of the hot plasma.
Firstly the oxygen and nitrogen react to form nitric oxide.
(N\u2082 + O\u2082 –> 2NO)
While cooling it further reacts and oxidizes to form nitrogen dioxide.
(2NO + O\u2082 –> 2NO\u2082)
Then when nitrogen dioxide comes into contact with water it reacts to create nitric acid.
(3NO\u2082 +H\u2082O –> 2HNO\u2083 + NO)<\/p>\n\n\n

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My first attempt was rather primitive, creating high voltage from the flyback transformer from an old crt tv,
2 electrodes stuck inside a plastic bottle to create a jacobs ladder, some tubes with a syringe to manually pump the air through once some nitrogen dioxide accumulated. and then a tube submerged in water with some cotton to create small bubbles to create the nitric acid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the end, I produced less than 100ml nitric acid in varying degrees of concentration.
Underneath are all photos relating to the project I could find.
It has been 5 years since I tried this so some photos and details I have lost and forgotten.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In need of some nitric acid and lacking the required chemicals I found out about the Birkeland\u2013Eyde process.By creating a high voltage arc in normal air a few chemical reactions occur because of the hot plasma.Firstly the oxygen and nitrogen react to form nitric oxide.(N\u2082 + O\u2082 –> 2NO)While cooling<\/p>\n

Continue readingNitric acid from air<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":843,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/843"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/labparvum.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}