This is like that "turning Lego into methamphetamine" video. Completely roundabout and impractical, but technically possible and fascinating. Great video!

I did nearly the exact same thing some 32+ years ago! I found an old US Military field handbook at a library (on a Dutch island no less...) that had a guerilla warfare section to it. It instructed how to make some crude nitrates in wilderness/jungle settings. Did the whole collecting various wood ashes, plant leaf litter etc, boiling down & filtering to concentrate the resulting salt solution(s). Next was to let it stand and allow time for crystallization. En fin, ended up with some dirty nitrates, and mixed with some other "stuff", made some impressive smoke "bombs". 10 years later I found myself graduating from University with a chemical engineering degree. Good times.

Literally making nitric acid out of wood but doesn’t know how to make a fire properly. That is the most chemistry thing ever. Great video.

With this knowledge, you could now technically make 2 parts of black powder from wood alone. Find a way to extract sulphur from wood and that's black powder from wood. All in all hilariously impractical, but a great video and fun concept.

If you are going to wash a powder with water, put water in the bucket before you pour the powder in so it will reduce the dust!

Im a chemist and I dont really expect to have some potassium nitrate in that wood ashes, just because it decompose at 400°C , further more I expect more to have somo HCl acid when you put sulfuric acid, just because KCl its a lot more stable. So you are probably wondering why when you put the copper it gives you a blue colour ?? This its because it so diluted that didnt give you the complex (CuCl4)-2 thats its green intead you get Cu(H2O)6Cl2

I commend the approach. However, this process is common to making homemade soap "Lye Soap". The best way to leach the potasium salts is to place the ash in a sock-like/teabag and steep in boiling water. Another note, the best wood to use for this process is, traditionally, Oak and other hardwoods. Pine and Spruce are good for other byproducts such as pitch and combustible liquids which require another process altogether.

Wood normally has a lot of moisture in it... So to know the yield, you really need to know just how much water it has. It gets a LOT lighter when it's truely bone-dry.

I'm honestly shocked that there was any nitrate left after burning. Super funny video I love it lol

For your future hands & back: always hit wood from bottom side (that one which is closer to ground). Axe should go right through with one or two hits, if not sharpen it. Going from top side (closer to sky) is several times harder, but you probably already noticed it. For people who still have problem: branches remnants should be A-shaped not V-shaped if log is placed. Then hit its top.

i love that kind of videos, where you make out of nature materials some chemicals. Transmutation is wonderful. Very good job!

cool vid, very interesting. a suggestion if you heat up the ash and water mixture I believe you would capture/leech more potash, it will make the filtering go quicker as well as the viscosity generally reduces with temperature.

For so many years I have always believed that potash is mashed potatoes. Now I know its some kind of acid. Thank you so much for enlightening me. You are the best!

These vids keep getting better and crazier. Keep it up, cause they're awesome. 🙀🙀🙀

Senku approves of this!

You should start with fully burnt white ash. A lot of the stuff you are trying to extract is trapped inside the charcoal grains making it hard to extract. Once the carbon is burnt away you will be left with a fluffy white ash that is much easier to work with.

Polish Nile Red! I just love your videos!! Keep up the good work, you are amazing!

Sulfuric acid is also producable from electrolysis, which I think could use ingredients only from the potash and some kind of sulfur compound.

Strongly underrated channel, maybe your accent isn’t the best but video is great and experiments are super interesting. Keep going!

If you want to go down the natural nitrate sources, bird droppings are a great way of getting started

man, you are awesome, I love your content❤

Thanks!

imma be honest, you strike me as NileRed, but before he had a fancy lab. Like a mixture of extractions & ire and NileRed. Kudos. I might actually try this one, as a chemistry afficionado

Thank you for the interesting video👍👍

Senku rolling around in the Stone World

good job!

Very cool video. Appreciate your time.

SUPER COOL

Fascinating chemistry is. Chemistry is not the study of reactions but rather of change.

I really enjoyed this video. You made me laugh. And it was super interesting!

I didn't know it was THAT easy to make nitric acid using a plasma arc and air. Inside a flask with two openings, air in and air out, in the middle there are two electrodes that gives the plasma arc. The air passes through the arc into another flask with water and another one after that with water. In the first water flask the nitric acid builds up and the second one catches what didn't stick in first flask. When you're done reduce the water content and you're done!

thanks

I enjoyed watching your video. It looked a lot like something I would do.

Love this video

for some weird reason watching your videos reminds me playing C&C Red Alert 1 :D

Good to see that ash could be used for something at least, though would be interested in something that a large portion can be used so it doesn't need to be thrown away. Also wondering what no flame way could get a fire going and is then safe to be around. Closest I can think it potassium permanganate and glycerine but I thing it still burns to quick to actually light a fire

Sulfur was mentioned in the comments below, but it might be interesting to precipitate sulfur from sodium thiosulfate tablets, chlorine remover tablets for tropical fish. I'm not sure if it's available in your country.

you can probably fix the scales, they have a way to readjust them

What about the potassium hydroxide in the ash, like when they do soap ? Where did it go ?

You should use boiling water to extract the ashes and an old t-shirt tried over the top of a large jar to filter out the debris before boiling it down.

I hope you used hot water too increase solubility because when I did a potash extraction from ash I got quite a significant amount of potash.

After you made the TACN, what would it become if you dropped in a piece of iron to precipitate out the copper? Would the solution still be just as flammable?

Awesome video, and such creativity keep it up. the only thing try to get a white background for the darker liquids so we can see them better.

wow that is how a real chemist thinks, keep up your work. You have a nice future :)

We can finally make more revival fluid, Senku!

Awesome!

Wow never though there would be enough nitrate in the potash to light a fire.

I think faster is to guide the the smoke through a shower to colect the nitrates that form in the combustion.

Did the "TACN" stuff make more fire and light than just the magnesium powder, or did it just take the "bright white" nature out of it?

500 years ago you would have been labeled a witch and burned at the stake! Well done. (Not burned until well done) 😂😂 Subbing and liking.

Interesting

Can you make a discord server so we can talk about chemistry in there and process 😊

Maybe a video about extracting sulfuric acid from coal wikipedia says that you can get ammonium sulfate as a byproduct of dry distilation

Nice video!

Thanks for this! I can now free my friends from the petrification that happened 3,700 years ago

Extracting spirit of wood for making flamier stuff.

what kind of wood do you burn ? in terms of how it was used to make nitric acid.???

Not sure about exact yield improvements, but in the context of organic gardening ramial woodchips are substantially more nutrient dense than arboreal woodchips. This leads me to believe that rather than logs, if you were to collect leafy branches, dry them out and then burn those, your final amount of potash would be far greater.

Wait till dr stone hears about this

ooo i alwways do this when nbowed !

Which acid mix in wood coal powder

Hello, Nice video and explanations. Just as a side note, the soluble extract of wood ash may contain organic carboxilic acids salts and those (what are no nitrates) may react with H2SO4 to set some volatile organic acid free. A typical example may be acetate setting acetic acid (ethanoic acid or vinegar) free. Such acids are weak but dissolve copper as blue Cu(2+) salts especially in the presence of O2 from the air (moisture + air + vinegar dissolve Cu and this accelerates upon concentration, agitation, aeration and heat); copper acetate is green-blue depending on concentration. It reacts with NH4OH to make Cu(NH3)4(H2O)2(OH)2 deep blue. The later when added with Mg powder will be energertic somehow because of the electrochemical oxidoredox couple Cu(2+) + Mg --> Cu + Mg(2+) what burns hot and bright and spead NH3 burning gas or N2 and H2O gases away... this is sadly no proof of nitrate present into the system. PHZ (PHILOU Zrealone from the Science Madness forum)

ما نوع الخشب المستخدم

Copper and nitric acid does work, to get it going typically you need to add a bit of water. You can google passivation to see why. Great video.

Coool video bro

5:55 did you use hot or cold water??

3:00 is more evidence that scientists should probably hit the gym 😎

If one has a fireplace and the chimney is not so high, when rains, the ash if stands on sensitive to acid materials, is slowly decomposing them. It was the first time I noticed that the wood could produce acid.

Burning wood chips, small sticks or mulch gives you a better yeild of ash...

Yeah you can get potassium nitrate from wood ash. Sodium nitrate aswell. But it takes months of soaking all of the ash including the big chunks in a water barrel. Then you leach the water.

Is the addition of sulfuric acid necessary dose lye work

So did you make metallic copper in the end when you burnt it and set it aflame?

there is on KZfaq another video about getting to KNO3 from wood fragments and pee left to biodegrade for a long time you can use that obtain HNO3

Question for you SMART chemistry people. Use to use a wood stove for heat..dumped out a lot of ashes..rained on the ashes and only left very white ashes left over...are the nitrates in the ground underneath? Like how saltpeter works?

While listening to this, I kept having the feeling that I am watching a NileRed video with an artificially modified voice. The wording is that similar. It's great!

you are like nilered but post more often that’s great

Wait until senku finds out about this

Has anyone used used Turf ash, its brick red so no idea whats in it. Decades ago I used so natural leached and crystalized concentrate* from the fire ashpile to get a squib effect. Not much to look at but proof there was something to it, never went full chemistry on it so am curious as to the chemical adventures of others. *rain washed and sun dried over long chunk of time, ancient way of finding nitre salts.

Right around 9:10, forbidden tea.

It's a mercury "retort". Godd one of the mortahsafers stones

now how do we get the sulfuric acid?

So you are living in poland ? Nice wideo by the way

Never grind strong oxidizers and reducing agents together in a mortar... I guess it was nitrite in the ash - from the decomposed nitrates in wood.

This is probably how aqua regia was incidentally made and discovered...

Imstant subscription

It makes complete sense, but i had never connected that the name Potassium is derived from pot ash -ium. Mind unexpectedly blown.

That's different.

what i want to see is wood IN nitric acid. then light it, will it burn or explode?

This video should give to Shenku in Dr.Stone

I wonder how this method compares to burning the wood, generating electricity from the heat, and pyrolyzing air into nitrogen oxides with the electricity?

Looks like the magnesium is doing all the show here.

BTW a better experiment would be turning wood into soap. You get KOH from potash and react it with some oil to get soap

Amazing job well done how are you friend well done

Nice project but it can be made more easily from air. A high power electric arc will produce nitrogen oxides, just dissolve the in water.

Be careful using gasoline to light the fire, because it's so volatile it can create a cloud of vapours and air that explodes when you go to ignite the fire, diesel fuel is less volatile and a safer way to lit the fire. Also avoid alcool, same problem of gasoline.

Magnesium burns intensely even with only the oxygen present in the air. So, to make the final test more conclusive, I would not add magnesium powder, but something else like carbon powder or even powder sugar. Regardless, I think your final test looked conclusive.

Crimes of fusion 😅

boil the potash until nothing but crystals are left, then distill with sulfuric acid to catch fuming nitric acid

"my character has chemistry but no forestry" "the book says you need forestry to start a fire" "that's dumb fire is just a chemical reaction." "fine, but you are going to have to roll for each task." "I weigh out the wood" "the +5 scale brakes" "I find a new scale" "it's not as good of a scale you will have +2 difficulty to your chemistry" "I chisel the wood it should give me +2" "the chisel gets stuck in the wood" "congratulations you do not put your eye out trying to pull the chisel out of the wood" "I get a ax" "you find a rusty old ax" "you do not chop the wood with the ax, but you also didn't get tetanus" "I get help" "the wood is chopped" "I get the grill" "1 the grill breaks it's rusted likely got it from the ax." "use the grill lid and metal bucket as the grill" "congratulations the top heavy grill will not get blown over by the wind." "I fill it with wood and soak it in gasoline and light it with a blow torch" "congratulations you did not get a 1 and the predictable thing did not happen but it does not stay lit." "I try again with the near by grass the grill is in" "it works" "ok I leave the fire unattended for a few hours to burn" "those dice are loaded, the town is not on fire it's just coals now" "I lift the hot grill inside the house to get it out of the grass field" "some how you do not burn your self or drop the grill" "I let it sit inside for 2 hours" "unattended again?" "yep" "ok their are still some hot coals left, and you are getting board you will only be able to take one last action, hint: their is bucket of water near by" "I stir the coals vigorously shaking the makeshift grill inside, to let them die out" "ok you successfully made fire the rest can be done using chemistry skill."

"I did a few tries with it, because it was just really nice to look at" Me: " What?!? Everything is dark-- _Oh god no, my eyes!!! _*_What have you done to my EYES_* "