[ukmicky]

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[]

Michael                                      

[pyromaster222]

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)

[Simmer]

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(])

[pyromaster222]

yes that would make sense as wood ash is mainly potassium carbonate

[jaydee]

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.

[Simmer]

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]

[maxinterax]

Hi
Phorphoresence is produced by phosphorous.

Has anyone tried to extract salt petre from dung?

best wishes
Max

[daveshorts]

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

[pyromaster222]

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.

[robotjesusbeta]

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?

[pyromaster222]

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.

[A Big Mug]

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.

[robotjesusbeta]

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?

[Vadermort]

Dude!
Saltpeter(KNO3) is found as a mineral and is common in China.
Chinese might have gotten it this way

b.s

[jace]

where can u get this saltpeter i need it would u find it in the local pharmacy[]


jack

[DrDick]

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.

[mad bomber]

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.

[Roysyboy]

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.

[Roysyboy]

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.

[Mjhavok]

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."