Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Chemistry => Topic started by: cuso4 on 27/01/2004 12:33:58
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I came across a piece of information that says gunpowder are made of charcoal, sulphur and salpeter. What is salpeter anyway?
Angel
"The people who will succeed are those who see the invisible and do the impossible."
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Potassium nitrate.
Supposedly it was also used in prisons and boy's schools to prevent erections, but I'm not sure how much of that is urban legend.
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Where does saltpeter come from naturally ? I read a beatiful piece the other day that said that one way to make it is to add potassium carbonate solution (potash) to a compost heap / dung heap and collect the filtrate.
The argument goes that calcium in the heap sequesters the carbonate as limestone (CaCO3) whilst the soluble nitrates leach out as KNO3 and can be collected and crystallised.
Clearly this isn't how the chinese did it - so where did they get their saltpeter ?
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
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The only natural source of potassium nitrate I've ever heard of is collected from bat guano, but that's not to say it's the only source.
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Come to think of it, digestion of nitrogenous material (i.e. proteins) could very well lead to production of nitrates in the excretory system...so I'm betting the Chinese got it from some sort of excrement, be it bat or what-have-you.
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So what in the world ever possessed the Chinese to collect filtrate from a dung heap and feed to to people to prevent erections? And you think the Americans have problems?
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I'm not sure if you're kidding.
I believe Chris was referring to the Chinese using it to make gunpowder. (they invented it and all)
Looking at China's population, I'm almost positive they have no chemical-induced erection problems.
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quote:
Originally posted by chris
Clearly this isn't how the chinese did it - so where did they get their saltpeter ?
Chris
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll make an exception"
- Groucho Marx
....From pig's manure.
Angel
"The people who will succeed are those who see the invisible and do the impossible."
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Sounds like a scat society to me. I'd have to agree, they don't seem to have any problems with erections, saltpeter notwithstanding.
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Why do you say that, bezoar?
Am I dead? Am I alive? I'm both!
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MAybe because there is an awful lot of them?
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Salt peter is commonly used in livestock to control breeding. It does appear to work in humans too. A little experiment was done with this to a couple of friends.[;)]
Q+A=Knowledge^2
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Yep, there are plenty of Chinese, but why in the world did they start digging around in feces to figure out what they could make out of it? Maybe, what with so many of them, it was an abundant natural resource, but you have to kind of wonder what made them think of that in the first place. I always wondered what attracted some docs to proctology. Seems strange to me.
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I just visited the Brandywine valley of Delaware where cuPont built the first quality gunpowder factory in the US in 1802. Saltpeter was imported as a crude salt from India. duPont purified the salt by dissolving in water, skimming off the crud, and crystalizing the solution to dryness. Alternate sources are biological action on manure, "night soil" (as in human), with wood ashes added to the mix and the liquids draining captured and purified. in fact, the southern ladies were proud to add their part to the manufacture of saltpeter (postassium nitrate) during the American war between the states when imports from India were embargoed.
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"...the war between the states..." Must be a southerner.
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quote:
Originally posted by gsmollin
"...the war between the states..." Must be a southerner.
Any you must be a d---yankee. [:D]
----
John - The Eternal Pessimist.
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I heard it was used in millitary training camps for teenagers, not possitive about that, but what i am sure of is that when combined with sugar makes one heck of a smoke bomb!!
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it does not make a bomb when combined with sugar but this micture is often used as a rocket propellant.
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There was also a process which somehow involved oxidising the urea in urine to saltpeter. I am not sure of the exact process but it happens naturally in animal sheds as you can sometimes see the phosphorescent glow from the saltpeter in old animal sheds.
I belive that at one point there was alaw that said you had to collect all the urine made in your house and give it to special urine collectors who would then make saltpeter with it.
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yes its something like mixing urine with decomposing matter and then leaving it for a long time then filtering. You should then theoretically get potassium nitrate. Thats how potassium nitrate was synthesised back in the day.I sure wouldnt like to be a saltpetre boy.
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i think you can extract pottasium nitrate from urine by removing the water content and using battery acid.
not sure how its done though. i could be totally wrong though[:)]
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Saltpetre is KNO3 and urine is urea. urea basically provides the nitrate (NO3-) part but i dont see how battery acid, which is sulphuric acid, could provide the potassium. in fact i dont know where the potassium comes from even for the original method (decomposing matter+urine)
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I saw a programme about traditional gunpowder manufacture quite recently. As you say, the urea in the urine decomposes to ammonia, which is converted by bacterial action in the dung heap to nitrate. The product, mixed nitrates, was then mixed with wood ash, which provides the potassium.
Potassium nitrate is fairly insoluble in cold water and very soluble in hot so a cold wash and a hot extraction would serve to purify it (plus a bit of sieving to remove the bigger lumps of fecal matter, I suppose [xx(])
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yes that would make sense as wood ash is mainly potassium carbonate
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I believe KNO3 does occur naturally, hence the name sal piètre - salt stone. Wikipedia is good on this sort of thing. Also capn James T Kirk collected some, shook it up in a bit of bamboo with some suphur and charcoal he found lying about and made a weapon to get a big beastie with. He showed mercy before crushing bb's head with a rock and was therefore recognised as an advanced life form.
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Well it can't have been that great a weapon if he had to resort to the old hitting-over-the-head-with-a-big-rock technology! [:)]
Definitely a superior life-form though - never lost his sense of humour whatever the universe threw at him [8D]
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Hi
Phorphoresence is produced by phosphorous.
Has anyone tried to extract salt petre from dung?
best wishes
Max
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Actually Phosphorus isn't a Phosphor, just to be really confusing. It does glow in the sort of way that phosphors do but this is actually due to it burning very slowly in the air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphor
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quote:
Originally posted by maxinterax
Hi
Phorphoresence is produced by phosphorous.
Has anyone tried to extract salt petre from dung?
best wishes
Max
never tried to and i really dont think its worth it as its easy to get as it is anyway.
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I have tried extracting it from Compost *home made, generally veg waste and plant matter* it was about 2-3 years in the making so i just put it in a plastic tub at the bottom I put some holes but in order to keep the stuff from dropping out I used an old cotton T Shirt that I had spread about 5 desert spoons of wet ash from the fire pit. So it now had an ash filter, also I now had a VERY stong cotton T shirt as UREA strenghtens cotton when wet *saw it on shanghai noon and had to look into it*. I put about 1 letre of water through the mix of compost and then finaly it got through the ash filter, leaving a nasty looking and smelling water [xx(]. So I then Boiled this down to about 1/12 of its original volume, left it to cool and then poured it into a ceramic bowl to evapourate the reminats of the water. End Result a very low yeild mix of Nitrates, practiality 2/100 id say, on a large scale the yeilds could be potentially fantastic. My compost could have been better if I had left it soaking in piss for a week or so, but i really dont want to smell boiled piss when I fire a cannon and hopefully neither do you lol
Is that the mouthwash in your eyes?
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yes but really why the hell do you want to make it that way, just buy it.. you will also get a load of impurities such as other nitrates potassium carbonate from the wood ash and if urine was used you would get urea left too.
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You can buy this from store who sell supplies for making sausage. I think it is used to preserve meat. We used to buy it by the pound from our local drug store. It's a real cheap oxidizer. We used to make smoke powder from it too. You could mix it in equal portions with sugar (a hydrocarbon) and light it with a match. Large amounts of thick white smoke. We are all lucky to have lived long enough to talk about this stuff. How many of us were very lucky in our backyard chemistry classes? I was. I found a source for magnesium once and decided to light it up along the side of my parents home. It was a night of course so nobody would see us. Right. My parents home lit up like the mother ship was overhead. I was grounded for weeks after that.
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hey, i was bored and i cant sit still for 5 minutes so i gotta keep busy or i tend to break things hahaha, besides its cool to see what old BP would have burnt like compared to the new compositions. Think i might try and refine some Nitrate again this time on a bigger scale so i get somthing worthwhile. Big mug if you think Kno3+sugar smoke mix is good you would cry at the perfection of a 1g flash charge in a lighter case, its a good container due to the fact its built to withstand preasure 1g wont come close to filling the container as we all know you need to give it some expansion space for it all to ignite. i like to burrie them, but i have set one off under a baked beans tin *empty and cleaned* it fired it somthing close to 40ft in the air and penetrated the metal of the can Mucho Funo
Is that the mouthwash in your eyes?
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Dude!
Saltpeter(KNO3) is found as a mineral and is common in China.
Chinese might have gotten it this way
b.s
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where can u get this saltpeter i need it would u find it in the local pharmacy[;)]
jack
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quote:
Originally posted by cuso4
I came across a piece of information that says gunpowder are made of charcoal, sulphur and salpeter. What is salpeter anyway?
Angel
"The people who will succeed are those who see the invisible and do the impossible."
There are actually two forms of saltpeter: regular saltpeter and Chilean saltpeter. Regular saltpeter is potassium nitrate and is primarily found in India, with smaller deposits in Bolivia, Italy, Spain and Russia. Chilean saltpeter is sodium nitrate, and is primarily found in (you guessed it) Chile.
These natural sources are no longer industrially important, since we can now make the saltpeters more effiiciently from other sources.
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
There was also a process which somehow involved oxidising the urea in urine to saltpeter. I am not sure of the exact process but it happens naturally in animal sheds as you can sometimes see the phosphorescent glow from the saltpeter in old animal sheds.
I belive that at one point there was alaw that said you had to collect all the urine made in your house and give it to special urine collectors who would then make saltpeter with it.
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Re: potassium nitrate. Here in England, in bygone days, they used to collect urine and then, I think, turned it somehow into alum, used as a mordant in the cloth-dying process. I think they turned the alum into potassium nitrate, tho' my memory's poor. Gunpowder was first used by English at the Battle of Crecy in 1346(?)-- crazy what one does remember.
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Re: potassium nitrate. Here in England, in bygone days, they used to collect urine and then, I think, turned it somehow into alum, used as a mordant in the cloth-dying process. I think they turned the alum into potassium nitrate, tho' my memory's poor. Gunpowder was first used by English at the Battle of Crecy in 1346(?)-- crazy what one does remember.
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Wikipedia states " A major source of Potassium nitrate was the deposits crystallising from cave walls " and also "A popular misconception is that potassium nitrate is an anaphrodisiac and was added to food in all-male institutions. In fact, potassium nitrate has no such effect in humans."
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Potassium Nitrate manufacture:
1. Place a charcoal filter at the bottom of a large strainer. You can make a charcoal filter by spreading fine wood ash between two pieces of cloth.
2. Fill strainer with nitrate-rich earth. The best sources of rich earth is well tended farm lands and decaying cellar floors.
3. Pour boiling water slowly over the earth.
4. Collect the water that drips out of the the strainer.
5. Strain the sludge out of this water.
6. Boil off half the water allow to cool.
7. Add an equal measure of alcohol to the water.
8. Filter through paper. (i.e. Coffee filter)
9. White Saltpeter crystals will collect on the paper (if you couldn't guess this is the potassium nitrate.)
I don't know if this procedure works, never tried.
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I saw this on Tv. it involved getting a bucket, filling it with soil from your garden, peeing on it, then waiting a while. when it dries there are small white crystals left behind. and apparently this is saltpetre. never tried it though. kinda ties in with whats said above lol
"You have to stay in shape. My grandmother, she started walking five miles a day when she was 60. She's 97 today and we don't know where the hell she is."
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Urine is extremely high in potassium and nitrites, so the creation of potassium nitrate from urine is very possible. I think that it was often filtered through buckets of straw in order to be synthesized.
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"Urine is extremely high in potassium and nitrites"
I doubt that.
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"Urine is extremely high in potassium and nitrites"
I doubt that.
Yes. I would worry very much in that case!
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I think you need to use stale urine - it was made in a heap of manure kept moist, but not wet so it is oxygenated. It is also mixed with wood ash which will provide the potassium. Bacteria then oxidise the urea to nitrates and you then after about a year you wash out the potassium nitrate with water.
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I think you need to use stale urine -
you are correct, Dave. Also the morning urine of heavy drinkers was prefered. Saltpeter is produced by bacteria that feed on decaying organic matter; the ammonium-rich liquid produced by heavy drinkers enhanced/s bacterial activity
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I once heard when I was a boy (1946) that in the past, in Tudor England, when they cleaned out their Mansions, the straw on the floor was collected by the Saltpeter man. I can well believe that. However I was talking to a real 'expert' on Tudor England & he hadn't heard of it. Can anyone out there enlighten me on it
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I think at one point in Paris, the citizens were required to dump their urine into pits for this purpose. I have not been able to find a reference to confirm this.
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Saltpeter is a mixture composed of many substances extracted with fire and water from arid and manurial soils, from that growth which exudes from new walls or from that loosened soil that is found in tombs or uninhabited caves where the rain cannot enter. It is my belief that it is engendered in these soils from an airy moisture that is drunk in and absorbed by the earthy dryness..