We show 3 ways to make nitric acid based on two different chemical approaches both of which can be done using easily accessible materials. Warning: The procedures in this video produce large quantities of toxic gases and deal with highly corrosive acids. All work must be performed in a fume hood with proper safety equipment. And all apparatus must be glass to withstand the acids. Chemically, nitric acid is made by bubbling nitrogen dioxide into water. So the objective in this approach is to generate nitrogen dioxide. This can be done by reacting hydrochloric acid, a nitrate salt and copper. Around 80grams of sodium nitrate, over 30 grams of copper and 100mL of hydrochloric acid (37% 12M) are the quantities needed. The exact amount isn't critical. For usable concentrations, the amount of water being converted should be small, around 20-50mL. Any source of nitrate is usable including potassium nitrate, ammonium nitrate and even nitrate-based fertilizers. You can use our previous video on testing for nitrates if you want to determine if yours can be used. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5M3rUqaEYs The tricky part now is leading the gas into water. Two approaches are shown in the video. In the first approach three containers, such as jars are place inside each other to force the gas to go into the water. This is very inefficient but is very simple to do. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yE7v4wkuZU

In this video we obtain the useful solvents diethyl ether and heptane from car starter fluid. Sign up for a free trial at audible: http://audible.com/nurdrage First, spray the car starter fluid into a flask. Setup a fractional distillation apparatus around the flask but cool the condenser with ice water. Diethyl ether boils at 34.6 degrees Celsius so a room temperature condenser wouldn't be as efficient as an ice temperature condenser. Now start with very light heating and gradually ramp up until diethyl ether starts to distill at 34 celsius or so. Go slowly at first as diethyl ether boils very easily. You'll need to gradually increase the temperature to keep the flow constant. Eventually there will be a spike in distillate temperature as the ether finishes distilling so stop the heating if it passes 70 celsius. The collected product diethyl ether while the residue should be other aliphatic solvents. Most starter fluids contain heptane in addition to ether. Diethyl ether is useful for grignard reactions and heptane is useful as a general purpose non-reactive non-polar solvent. Donate to NurdRage! Through Patreon (preferred): https://www.patreon.com/NurdRage Through Bitcoin: 1NurdRAge7PNR4ULrbrpcYvc9RC4LDp9pS ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8MwwpSWeq4