Uarbor Posted September 5, 2022 Posted September 5, 2022 I'm just curious if anyone has done the old school method with the dirt and urine. I have a batch in progress that will be ready in Spring. I am using nitrated dirt from the chicken coop which I will be adding urine to all winter long. I will then dry it out and pour boiling water over it and capturing the drainage which I will then throw in a refrigerator or freezer to crystallize the nitrates. I was just wondering if anyone had accomplished this on this forum. If so let me know what you found out. If not I will certainly post my results.
Arthur Posted September 5, 2022 Posted September 5, 2022 The old organic methods will still work, but slowly! And as before people will complain that the compost doesn't contain nitrates if you have already extracted them. Part of the reason why the Haber Bosch process became a major world scale process is that the cost of nitrates is less and the production is greater. BUT the pressures needed are extreme for "home" use
pyrojig Posted March 8, 2023 Posted March 8, 2023 Gotta admit I have always been curious About doing the process . To my Understanding, pot ash( wood ash like from a wood stove) high nitrate (poop soil) possibly chicken coop , and the hot water filtered bucket approach, followed by cool precipitation. how much could possibly be produced this way? Obviously re crystallization to purify. . Im sure much depends on the quantity of nitrate in the poo product
ThrownBiscuit Posted March 11, 2023 Posted March 11, 2023 I've done the hot water filtered approach with bat guano from an old railway tunnel from near where I live. It did not produce much yield for the effort. I would have to find my old notes to double check, but I think I had about 1.5 oz. of nitrate from 5 gallons of guano.
ThrownBiscuit Posted March 12, 2023 Posted March 12, 2023 Okay, I found my old notes (I have moved since I did the experiment and the experiment was began on July 14, 2005). I was not remembering correctly I made 1.23 oz. of potassium nitrate from the 5 gallon bucket of bat guano. The guano weighed ~4 lbs dry (used a bathroom scale to measure so weight of guano is approximate). The large quantities of insect exoskeletons probably was affecting density. Once I added the 2 gallons boiling water I found that the guano retains the water strongly and was too hot to squeeze the water out by hand also that the guano needed to be held down with a shovel while adding water until saturation. (For reference I was a young teenager at that time, so I have slightly more sense now, boiling water is obviously hot). Waited for it to cool while the guano slurry was in the bucket. Squeezed out the filtrate by hand through an old towel into an old colander lined with towel and wood ash. After the colander finished draining into the pot below I left the pot in the shed for the next week with periodic checkups and skimming the crystals forming on the surface of the filtrate. Got tired of waiting around (young teenager) and boiled the filtrate down to residuals, scraped the inside of the pot and let the crystals finish drying. I was fairly stupid at the time and did not recrystallize for purity and just used it in my first attempt to make black powder. It made the weakest black powder I have ever made but everyone has to start somewhere I suppose. There were a lot of other problems with that BP than just impure potassium nitrate, for one thing my charcoal source was barbecue briqettes, and I had no clue about proper milling procedure, and did not corn it.
ThrownBiscuit Posted March 12, 2023 Posted March 12, 2023 I think I will revisit making potassium nitrate, I expect I can improve my yield and purity this time around. Especially now that I can afford to use slightly more appropriate tools for the job and have a bit more patience.
Arthur Posted March 13, 2023 Posted March 13, 2023 The nitrates present in natural compost will be largely sodium nitrates, which are highly soluble. Potassium nitrate is made by mixing sodium nitrate and a potassium salt (originally from wood ash which would contain a mix of potassium oxide, hydroxide and carbonates on reaction with water, and CO2). It's much easier to precipitate a potassium salt than a sodium salt.
Bigtmj46 Posted November 11, 2023 Posted November 11, 2023 I know this is a crazy question but wouldn't any urine work to produce nitrate?
kristenbrown Posted July 12 Posted July 12 Interesting project! I haven't tried it myself, but I'm curious to see your results. Keep us updated!
Indypyro317 Posted July 12 Posted July 12 On 9/4/2022 at 10:24 PM, Uarbor said: I'm just curious if anyone has done the old school method with the dirt and urine. I have a batch in progress that will be ready in Spring. I am using nitrated dirt from the chicken coop which I will be adding urine to all winter long. I will then dry it out and pour boiling water over it and capturing the drainage which I will then throw in a refrigerator or freezer to crystallize the nitrates. I was just wondering if anyone had accomplished this on this forum. If so let me know what you found out. If not I will certainly post my results. If you want more information on making potassium nitrate I would check out the improvised munitions handbook it has lot of formulas in it and techniques stay away from a lot of the other parts of the book lots of semi safe lab techniques and comps not really fit for fireworking
Soloserly Posted August 27 Posted August 27 If you have way too much time on your hands there's an interesting series of Youtube videos on making KNO3 from "Nitrified Earth" on a channel called Green Country Agroforestry. Watching it was enough to convince me to not try it. 😅
Arthur Posted August 27 Posted August 27 Early nitrate was produced by the bio action in a huge compost heap. All the farmyard waste from pigs cows horses and probably humans was put in a heap and left to rot for a year or so, then water was flushed through to extract the soluble (sodium) nitrates, which were then put to dry in the sun and wind. It was collected, recrystalised and used for powder production. This was unpopular because the nitrates were taken for the government to make powder, leaving very inferior manure to use as fertiliser in the spring. Otherwise the Birkeland-eyde process was invented in Norway to make nitrate from air and electricity (freely available as hydro in Norway). The modern methods use high temperature and high temperature and special catalysts to make ammonia then nitrates -probably beyond amateur facilities.
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