Nitric acid is very useful for every chemist from a high school student to a professional. You can use nitric acid to make sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, lithium nitrate, calcium nitrate, and the list goes on.
What you need to make nitric acid are two very common ingredients: ammonium nitrate (which can be found as a fertilizer found at a farming supplier or in instant ice packs found in you drugstore), and hydrochloric acid (found under the name of Muriatic acid at every hardware store or Canadian tire.
To make the nitric acid, start by crushing the ammonium nitrate into a powder, and then add about half a cup to a GLASS container (metal containers interfere with the process, and plastic containers will melt), and then measure out half a cup of hydrochloric acid, and pour it into the GLASS jar of ammonium nitrate. Almost immediately a reaction will take place of hydrogen gas being created and color change in the mixture, and also a tiny bit of ammonia gas will be created.
The reaction formula is:
NH4NO3 + HCl = NH4Cl + HNO3
let the mixture in the jar sit for about ten minutes for the full reaction to take place. After ten minutes you will notice that there are two different color layers: one that is clay color, and another that looks like olive oil.
The clay color layer will make up 90 % of the mixture. The other 10 % will be the olive oil looking layer.
The clay color layer is the ammonium chloride (NH4Cl), and the olive oil layer is NITRIC ACID.
If you want pure nitric acid, just filter it out the liquid nitric acid.
This is the easiest method by far to make nitric acid, as you do not have to buy any of the ingredients online, and also it uses two very common ingredients!!!
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