As a teen , I tried my hand at making fireworks. The local pharmacy had most of the chemicals I needed. However, I ran the pharmacy out of saltpeter, so I had to turn to my homemade stuff. Fortunately I lived in an agrarian area, and a neighborhood sheep pen needed cleaned. And you get the rest of the story. Thank you for sharing this bit with us. I enjoy your posts, a lot.

@ogi22

10 ай бұрын

Hahaha, What young people do to make things go "boom" 😁 Don't worry, i had my fair share of fun with saltpeter and sugar propelled things (we loved to put this stuff in hard liquor caps, poke a couple of holes and light it with a bit of match head stuff used as an ignition source). We even made competitions, who's cap will fly higher :)

@joecrowe7062

9 ай бұрын

When was that u cant buy that from the pharmacy anymore, the good old days are gone

@ogi22

9 ай бұрын

@@joecrowe7062 You still can buy saltpeter in a bulk in gardening stores ;)

In medieval Europe, there used to be people who made a living collecting urine. There were so many uses for urine. But to make saltpeter, they used the saltpeter beds you described. It's interesting that people used to know how to use "waste" products to create useful materials. We certainly need to do more of this. For instance, we COULD be using sewage sludge to create biogas instead of burying it in landfills.

@WarkWarbly

10 ай бұрын

Interesting you mentioned this, as the county I live in is testing this as a renewable/green energy source. They mostly just bake into charcoal briquettes and then burn it in coal reactors. Kinda like a steam train.

@VojvodinaNet

10 ай бұрын

khm, khm...they might be already doing just that :) And the water too :)

@TheHappinessOfThePursuit

10 ай бұрын

They collect, refine, and sell out urea from city water facilities. They also sell our poop back to us to spray on fields and big farming loves it.

@binra3788

10 ай бұрын

Biosludge - in US sold as 'organic' contains all kinds of chemical pollutants. So be aware that profit plunder operates any ruse to dump out toxic consequences to the masses as green virtue. 'Solutions' that are real become an effective mask or marketing pitch. fake 'solutions' are problems or toxic debts repackaged and sold as 'appreciable assets' or credits. Human ingenuity set in war & plunder - or getting for self-at expense of others (& whole) seeks always to game or hack the system, and the minds of all who depend on systems.

@turkeytrac1

10 ай бұрын

In the part of Canada I live in, the sterilized sewage sludge is used as fertilizer on non root crops. It's used to amend the soil in which wheat, rye, and peas are grown.

from the blue ridge mountains in se usa, robert murray-smith you be awesome !! thank you for who you are and the gifts you so freely share

@alexanderrjn188

14 күн бұрын

Show low AZ here!

I came into this video with questions. I leave with them answered, but with more scientific enlightened questions on the brow of the hill. Safe to say, I have learned something, and left with the thirst for more knowledge on production and history of saltpetre. Thats a great format and enlightening!

Nitrification bacteria convert ammonia into nitrates in aquaponic systems as well. The first bacteria turn the ammonia into nitrites, then the second turn the nitrites into nitrates.

This was a great chemistry, and science lesson. Wish could’ve had you as a teacher Rob. Great knowledge you’re passing on!

@Hawkewood

10 ай бұрын

We'd darn sure be outdoors more than any science class I was ever in.

I enjoyed that you switched up the science, from the recent fare. Robert, another AMAZING thing about your channel is, the learning doesn't stop when the video end, but continues in the ... comment section.

you can also change the sheets for straw or chaff. If you make this mostly a waste reprocessing system, you can get more than salt peter out in some builds, but even more, after the leeching you can compost it, with most ash, and remaining materials are almost all fertilizers. leftover nitrogen compounds, broken fiber materials, rare earth oxides, and if you were careful about the lime amounts, useful calcium salts.

That was fascinating. Thank you again sir for sharing your knowledgd and wisdom. God Bless you and your family.

Thanks Rob, for the entertaining explanation and history.

It's also what traditionally makes cured meats (eg bacon!) pink when cooked. It is reduced by good bacteria (lactic acid bacteria) into potassium or sodium nitrite and then into nitric oxide, which binds to myoglobin in the muscle in the same way as oxygen does, thus, the same colour: Pink/red. This reduction process preserves the food while it's active, enourages good vs bad bacteria, and generally provides a safe environment while salt removes the water from the meat, the salt makes its own way-in (osmosis) and while the meat is air-dried or smoked. If anyone is concerned about nitrites remaining in bacon that they eat: It's a fermentation process, where none is remaining at the end. Vitamin C is added to be sure of this, in modern production, and anyway the answer would be to have a glass of orange juice or some tomatoes with it. Nitates and nitrites are also present in vastly larger quantities in green leafy veg (eg spinach) Don't BURN the bacon, however, or a lifetime of doing-so hightens the risk of cancer. Here endeth the bacon lesson, but between preserving food and gunpower, one can see that civilization has been founded on this substance in a big way, alongside several other important ones of course.

@Hawkewood

10 ай бұрын

Nice, interesting tidbit.

@exploreseafaring

10 ай бұрын

I'll never look at a bacon butty the same way ever again.

@AlyxGlide

8 ай бұрын

using sodium nitrite & nitrate in food preservation is not traditionally from antiquity it is via our rather new additive curing process around the 1900s & is debated in safety as they are listed to generate higher nitrosamine carcinogens listed across food safety regulation .. & to say that they exist in higher quantities in leafy greens than processed meats is bizarre

@AlyxGlide

8 ай бұрын

& if you believe that sprinkling sodium nitrite equates to sprinkling fennel seed then I hope you're not a chef..

@TheBaconWizard

8 ай бұрын

@@AlyxGlide It is a fact. Nitrates have been in use for hundreds of years at least, as Potassium Nitrate, almost certainly thousands as my research in The Dead Sea and the production of salts for curing during Roman occupation lends further evidence for. And green leafy veg contain more of it than is used for curing, especially if they are somewhat light-stressed such as winter spinach. Not just slightly more. VASTLY more, like perhaps 6000ppm vs the 80ppm that is the minimum needed to cure (although unreliable at that level unless using NaNo2) note how some products are sold with this as a marketing point; beetroot juice for example. You maybe be confusing it with the fact that THE MECHANISM of conversion from KNO3 to KNO2 or NaNo3 to NaNo2 by bacterial action (respiration) was discovered in the late 1800s leading to artificial fertilizers and curing compounds. It is entirely possible although not always desirable to cure meats using only vegetable powder as I showed DEFRA while in consultation for them concerning proposed regulation of nitrites in organic curing. Celery seed power is one of the most reliable but is a common allergen and of course has a flavour although not as strong as one might think after curing. Furthermore, the final product in curing is neither nitrate nor nitrite but nitric oxide. This is ALSO produced during smoking from the combustion process itself and is the reason for a traditional "smoke ring". It is possible to cause that smoke-ring to cover the entire piece of meat all the way to the centre for smaller cuts as was a source of research I did for did for Danepak, but proved too expensive to do commercially (in their market) as special equipment is needed and it is a slower process. ALSO viable in technical terms is the direct addition of Nitric Oxide, however it is very dangerous as any leaks will result in Nitrous Oxide which is deadly. Not to mention that it is not approved for food use.

Back in my early Internet days I had a thing for potassium nitrate. I used to watch how to vids on smoke bombs and had a go myself. Occasionally they fell over and shot across the garden lol. I'm much more grown uppy these days though. But I like to imagine theres still a file on me in some government department with the heading "harmless nutcase" due to the copious (probably not that much comparably) amounts of potassium nitrate I used to order on ebay.

Another very interesting show - certainly a change from the normal.

Fascinating stuff!

Farmers still do that thing with peas. My uncle who was a farmer was telling me a lot of farmers would plant a crop of peas and then mulch them back into the soil before they started to produce any pods as the pods growing depletes any nitrogen in the plant. Then they would sow their wheat crop soon after the mulched the pea plants.

HCl and saltpetre will form what's known as Poor Man's Aqua Regia, and will dissolve gold.

In Victorian England there were people who would collect dog poop from the streets because their were so many stray dogs. Once the poop formed white crystals on the surface, saltpeter, you could extract that to make gunpowder.

love this channel so glad I found it.

My pawpaw taught me how to make my own fertilizer with it back in the day.

@Robert Murray Smith, good to see you again my good sir! I fell out of the internet back when you obtained the 3D printer. i just wanted to say thank you again for the time spent sharing the 2k+ videos with everyone that all hold good knowledge in what i call, "the advancement of energy conversions" i do believe its my final study as well as the most important knowledge to have, is just knowing its importants. As a primary direction of knowledge needs to become more common worldwide.

I once went out in an old BMW car of a friend of mine, it was winter, we went walking in the snow and ice and after many hours arrived back at the car just as it was getting dark, on getting into the car I was astonished, has he started the engine, instant hot air came from all the vents, in a few seconds the ice just fell off the windscreen, when I asked what was going on, he said it had a Phase change heat store which dumps 45000 watts of energy instantly into the engines coolant circuit. After doing some research it was basically a box surrounded by Aerogel insulation containing a eutectic mixture of Potassium Nitrate and Lithium Nitrate, I would love to replicate it.

@JehuMcSpooran

9 ай бұрын

Very interesting. Got a link to any other descriptions or patents?

Double thumbs up! Entertaining and informative at the same time.

That villainous saltpetre that many a good tall fellow hath destroyed so cowardly. Henry the Fourth : Part One.

I think there is a mine under the North Sea where there are huge deposits of fertiliser. Mine entrance is from Lincolnshire.

Guy Fawkes had to be very wealthy to get so much gunpowder.

So CONVENIENT!

Interesting. I just used it to make smoke bombs which often turned into rocket motors.

Please turn the volume up a trifle for us with a bit of trouble hearing? Others can adjust their volume down. Thanks.

very useful for learning how to make good soil too.

RMS, your audio was weak this time. I had to crank my volume to maximum and then you were audible. Since you don't use a clip-on microphone, a boom type microphone might be a good investment. Always interesting topics. As a Chemical Engineer, I studied nitrate production for the Civil war. They were using bat guano out of the caves and converting to KNO3. Cheers!

@jonbutcher9805

10 ай бұрын

Hmm. It came through loud and clear for me. Maybe a local glitch in your system? I'm sure others will comment on the audio issue to narrow it down. But for me... Crystal.

@kadmow

10 ай бұрын

Agreee, quiet audio.

Amazing story, thanks!

Wow, that really is fascinating. Thank you.

great work rob! fascinating :)

Very interesting stuff as always. Sound seems really quiet, tried listening on 3 different devices, gave up and used the closed captioning, which I appreciated.

Yup, it's good for the boom stick, there's a different kind of powder, not boom but just as amazing. Baking powder, if you are worried of some thing happening. It changed just as much as boom sticks.

Very interesting. Is there a faster way to do it now beaides the freezer method you spoke about at the beginning?

Love the video Robert.

Thanks for this video. Very interesting. 30,000 chinese labourers in the early 19th century were tricked into believing they were travelling to the gold fields of California and were indentured on the Chincha Islands off the west coast of South America to mine guanno. A huge number died of accidents and lung diseases associated with the hellish conditions on those islands. Sailing ship crews would spend their off duty hours high in the rigging while the ships loaded, rather than suffer the horrendous fumes below decks. Small wars in the Americas were fought over possession of this stuff.

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

Shocking story. There was abuse of Chinese on the Canadian railway also .

Would passing pipes thru the heating from the pile reclaim some of the heat for some other purpose while keep the pile st a steady temp?

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

I've come across hot water produced by running pipes through beds of composting material. I think the fella told me getting horse manure for the bacteria was key but my memory could be corrupted there, cause why not cow manure ? Surely there must exist manure specialists.

A topic of interest to me as well, it's crazy that we pay sewage plants to actually reduce nitrite and nitrates back to N2, would it not make sense to arrest the process once nitrates are formed and extract them? The Ostwald process is great but quite energy intensive. Thinking an aquaponic digester would speed up the natural process a bit, and nitrosomonas bacteria can be found in the brown slime algae that forms on the surface of rocks in a stream, especially where the stream pools a bit. Cheers

@bigmouthstrikesagain4056

10 ай бұрын

Interesting.... could thos be used in a sort of home mass production way by harvesting the bacteria?...

❤

I keep some at the house,black powder making,lots of people don't know what it is. When I go buy it have to look for stump removal

invaluable!!!! Thank you!! Please work on the sound quality of the videos. The sound is rather low and muddled throughtout the presentation of many of your expertly explained content.

You can instead use a corona discharge to ionize an air/ammonia-mixture and pass it through a saturated KCl-solution;) But be patient! This process is not by any means quick either!

I've a feeling this video is leading into novel ideas on saltpetre can be used in energy generation and storage... I continue to watch with anticipation :) Thanks Rob, always appreciate your work

In North Korea, children have to take the house faeces to school, to collect for fertilisers .. as mentioned in Yeonmi Parks recent autobiography ..

I winder if there would be a way to do this with modern methods and automation to speed up the process to a month or two?

@bigmouthstrikesagain4056

10 ай бұрын

Maybe gmo bacteria that are better at converting the nitrogen or adding air stones and a heating or cooling system to a compost aerator bin that can be spun to aerate it?

Dandelions are high in potasium nitrates feed that to rabbits etcetera and you are off to the races a lap ahead.

During the American “civil” war the South mined Potassium Nitrate from caves with large bat populations. Visited a couple in Arkansas with that history as part of the tour.

What video is the one on the magnetic stirling? There are so many videos I can't find it.

@ThinkingandTinkering

10 ай бұрын

I removed them when i did the short - they weren't very well watched and all the basic info was in the short - guess I can redo them

@justtinkering6713

10 ай бұрын

@@ThinkingandTinkering thanks. I'd like to make one. The short was so short I missed most of it .

Rob, can fuming nitric acid increase the nitrate energy level any? I ask b/c this is a strategy with ammonium nitrate (fertilizer), and a reason that fertilizer cannot be sold, or bought, in the U.S. beyond 13% strength without a federal license.

@magabesse

9 ай бұрын

Funny thing about the US, you cannot buy ammonium nitrate for your garden, BUT it is legally sold without a license as a Tannerite kit

Can you do a video on using compost piles to heat a house...while at the same time making soil beautiful idea

is there a modern approach? For example, pumping air into a liquid mix, to get the saltpeter out that way?

Captain Kirk found nice deposits of saltpeter when he fought the Gorn in TOS: "Arena"... ;-)

I made some KNO3 the old fashioned way, many years ago. That was perhaps the most vile thing I’ve done in my life. My end product was poor, probably contaminated with NaNO3. It’s good that we now have the Haber Process.

Excellent presentation! (~_^)-b

I believe bat guano deposits in many caves are also a rich source of potassium nitrate.

@bigmouthstrikesagain4056

10 ай бұрын

Also a rich spurce of deadly viruses like rabies and Marburg virus... so you'd probably want to wear a chainlink suit or hazmat suit and a respirator to harvest that?

@partciudgam8478

10 ай бұрын

Yes, but Wayne industries has the monopoly on that...

@emariaenterprises

10 ай бұрын

@@partciudgam8478 LOL!

Potassium = Pot ash (wood ash put in a pot with a water)

I really love your stuff. Being American and not having the equipment to hear your very low volume, I simply can't get enough to understand which makes it pointless

You'd be a fantastic alchemist!

In the 18th century they even used old graveyard soil to extract saltpetre. I have read this in an old book.

Ah. *starts designing nitrification into aquaculture scheme*

@russellzauner

10 ай бұрын

(nitrate and other extractions could replace molecular sieves, which aren't self-cleaning but collection is literally the process of cleaning so the waste can be reprocessed in-situ, tightening the "closed-ness" of the system)

There is also a phase in aquarium cycles where waste ammonia is converted to nitrite, then nitrate, then nitrogen by an third bacterium. This process could modified to stop at nitrate. Still not a small scale hobby to produce a useful amount.

Saltpetre? What possible use could it have beyond rotting tree stumps?

@carllito12

10 ай бұрын

Add some sulfur and charcoal to it light a match and find out

@sparky6086

10 ай бұрын

@@carllito12 !!!

It was also known as a niter bed

je serais curieux de voir comment tu utilises le kno3 pour les batteries et supercapacitors... 1) on peut faire du charbon actif dopé 2) il est intéressant comme électrolyte 3)facile à récupérer et très peu cher dans le monde agricole (8€/25Kg !!)

👍🏻

Ah crop rotation, turnip Townshend rules.

If you want to have some fun get a copy of "Magic with Chemistry" by Edward L. Palder from the mid-60's. Spent many hours of my misguided youth following it's recipes for fireworks, instant fire and flaming ice cubes. Of course today I'd recommend it for "entertainment purposes only." It's amazing I still have all my fingers. 😂

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

The Young Chemist publication goes way back too into late 1800s . The russian publication Experiments without Explosions is intriguing to read .

All that work or take leafs from Coltsfoot plant (Tussilago farfara) that already as a high content of saltpeter and sulfur...

Ohhh! So that's what the white stuff is on the clods in my bag of compost!

This is really cool, but the sulfur is the real issue. Is it readily available within nature? Is there a means of extraction, precipitation, or some similar process to chemically separate it from random earth?

@schinderiapraemeturus6239

10 ай бұрын

yes, sulfates and sulfites can be reduced back to elemental sulfur, and sulfides can be oxidized similarly. Calcium sulfate (gypsum) would be a readily available source. However for making black powder, I prefer modern substitutes that contain no sulfur whatsoever, i.e. Triple 7, Blue MZ,

@WarkWarbly

10 ай бұрын

@@schinderiapraemeturus6239 You lost me at gypsum 😅

@partciudgam8478

10 ай бұрын

Sulphur is extracted in asia from volcanoes, and sold in hardware stores as a vermin remover

@steammachine3061

10 ай бұрын

Onions and most of the allium family in particular are high in sulphur. It's the reason they make your eyes stream when you chop them. I'm sure they're not the only plant that contains them. Both nitrates and sulphur can be had in one form or other from a garden centre anyway as both are used as plant food. Nitrates I believe are used for strong leaf growth. Nettles will often grow where theres nitrate rich soil as well so as well as the soil beneath nettles are probably high in nitrates.

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

Sulphur is readily available in nature still . Heaps of places like in Indonesia Spain Italy Germany Russia China....

Be careful... The salt peter...can take the lead out of your pencil! Lol! The navy used it in food on ships to keep the sailors from.....well you know....getting any stiffness in their...joints! Lol!

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

Potassium bromide? Prisoners talked about bromide tea . I'm avoiding details of the nitrates taken orally. In Australia anyway, we had Ford Pills once . I got snippets about it and quarantined any further looks in .

@ancientsage4071

9 ай бұрын

There are also tales of witches who used it to keep their men faithful.

I hope you'll take a look at this, maybe a new thing? Using cement and black carbon to make a super capacitor?

But in the modern context, how did we go from the ammonia created by the Haber-Bosch process (yes, I know we've gone beyond that now, but I'm talking about a century past, the beginning of the "modern era") to get the nitric acid to get nitrate fertilizer? [Again, in modern context we use the nitric acid to make nitrocellulose "smokeless" powder; but the nitrates for fertilizer is the actual important commercial process since w/o it the world would be starving...]

@hubrisnaut

10 ай бұрын

Germans... Ostwald process, the catalytic conversion of ammonia to nitric acid.

Caesium nitrate is better explosion The exhaust fumes of diesel and gas turbines contain NOx Potash is plasma separated Is there any urine chemistry reactions? Sewage treatment chemistry to produce explosives?

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

Have you watched Cody's lab.

So hows phosphorus made from urine?

I wonder if strait urea, sulfur and carbon would work like black powder.

Chicken coops would grow in my chicken coops on the bottom layers of straw and it would be quite prevalent you could see it if you put it in a big garbage can and soaked it you could fish out the straw and cook down the water

During covid here in Australia there was a shortage of Ad Blue Diesel additive re a shortage of Urea not being shipped from China .. How weird when we could make it ourselves essentially ... Thats one thing a bout Australia that I despise, We have no manufacturing industry here...

A common source of saltpetre in the 1800s was __ batshit ! "It was for the salt-peter, to be used in making gunpowder that guano deposits in many caves in Missouri were worked during the Civil War" (Bat Guano and its Fertilizing Value. Wm. A. Albrecht. 1921) There were large Bat Guano deposits worked in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia in the 1800s, mainly for fertilisers (Diversity and Biogeography of Subterranean Guano Arthropod Communities of the Flinders Ranges, South Australia. Timothy Andrew Moulds )

I like the conclusion, that we need something equally revolutionary for the problems we have today. But there aren't enough big brains on the planet to concoct a plan. For starters, power is already centralized and that means "free press", or "free speech" means nothing anymore because "we" mean nothing. To make better use of our resources is a must. We cannot use this planet indefinitely the way we treat it now. 8 billion people isn't too much, no matter what anyone says, but CEO's and governments would rather have you believe their cuban cigar / income is well-earned.

Excellent video... but... Charles The Second wasn't dethroned. His father (Charles The First) was with the aid of some rather extreme surgery.🙂

Your sound level of this lesson/video forced me to turn subtitles on. I'm curious why we are making saltpeter since this is an energy production/heating channel, not so much a make-things-go-boom channel

@justtinkering6713

10 ай бұрын

Controlled booms, can run an engine.

@dermotbalaam5358

10 ай бұрын

Nothing wrong with the sound.

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

Nitrates are good fertilizer and the potassium variant ain't hygroscopic. It's a neatly packaged source of potassium and nitrogen, it's magic for plants .

Anyone with an aquarium at home has had plenty of experience producing and trying to get rid of nitrates. 😂

See: Birkeland-Eyde or Nodon Process.

I just thought I had a Crappy job.

The ingenuity of the human mind is always astounding. My favorite example is cheese making. To gelify the casein protein you need rennit. Rennit comes from the dried stomach of a 2-3 day old lamb or kid. Any older and they won’t be feeding on the colostrum from the mother sheep or goat, and the stomach lining is no longer rich with rennit. Who was it, I wonder, and why was it, that someone thought, we should kill a new baby lamb tip out it’s stomach, dry it, break off a bit, grind it up and mix it into fresh milk. To quote Napoleon Hill: Whatsoever the mind of man Can Conceive, And believe, It can Achieve

@koaasst

10 ай бұрын

the fig tree would also be found to gel out the casein, the latex when you broke a stem was ready to go at it. another rabbit hole for those interested.

Have looked at abblue

:)

Cities are gold mines for resources and they will pay you to take those resources from them it is insane.

It's really easy to substitute this with a colorate salt that can be made through electrochemical method quite easily albeit slowly but it's very very dangerous and unstable when you add sulfur. Now if you take it all the way to a perchlorate by changing the amperage per square centimeter or whatever it is it's been a while you were able to stabilize the mixture but you lose some of the bang for your buck. So it's really not a viable alternative in my opinion map 4 home use that's for sure it's too damn dangerous

make your nitrate in a fish tank

Have you looked ad blue

@patrickdocherty2456

10 ай бұрын

Sorry have you at adblue for Diesel

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

​@@patrickdocherty2456it's urea . Sold also as fertilizer, once cheap but the russian escapades have escalated the price .

So Rob & team, how long until we see a video on LK99? You wouldn't happen to be baking some yourself, perchance? 😉 Also, Integza's latest video on a Tesla Turbine is worth a look - they generate 1200w using motors from an electric RC car and air at just 20psi, it's quite something!

@ICallBullTV

10 ай бұрын

When its proven real

@William_Hada

10 ай бұрын

What do they use to compress air to 20 psi? The power required to run an air compressor would have to be subtracted to determine the net output of the system.

@ICallBullTV

10 ай бұрын

@@William_Hada A compressor was used in the example, but steam would be used in real world

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

We gotta stop to think when Tesla name is used these days. Especially if cars and electricity are also in context ,

@philip5940

10 ай бұрын

Lk 99 might be that latest superconductivity craze . Their was another craze in 1986 for barium, copper, ytrium and stuff cooked up in ovens and superconducting in liquid nitrogen. Sabine Hoff...... recently gave her take on it .

Sewer water harvesting,

Handy =GunZenBomZ=

Volume is so low

Saltpeter... the Anti-Viagra... ;-P

Charles II died as king.