The video demonstrates how to turn air into nitric acid using electricity by creating a high-voltage electrical arc to separate nitrogen from the air. The process involves using a grape to produce plasma, finding a suitable power source, setting up a system to plasmify the air and collect it in water, and creating a sealed container for the reaction. The method is refined by using metal straws or copper tubing for improved efficiency. The steps include sealing gaps, connecting wires, and setting up a system to produce nitric gas for collection in water, simplifying the process.
I'm going to show you how to simply turn air into nitric acid using electricity. The process is simple. We're going to need to generate a high-voltage electrical arc. So our first step is going to be finding something that can produce enough voltage. Because we need higher voltage, we can't rely on something like a 9-volt battery used in my previous videos. Now you might be wondering how I'm able to do this. Well, the ingredients in air are majorly nitrogen, so we just need to find a way to separate it. Once we separate the gas, we just put it inside of water, then distill it. Then you're left over with some nitric acid. So I need to find a way to separate the air from the nitrogen inside of this bag. Now I could be wrong, but when air gets extremely hot, nitrogen and the air separate. And there's a lot of easy ways to produce heat. But we're going to need something way hotter than this. Something like this still isn't even close. And as shown in some of my other videos, even thermite isn't going to be hot enough to do what we need. At this point, you're probably thinking, man, I've seen all these insanely hot things. What on earth is possibly going to work? And as insane as it sounds, all you actually need is a grape. This is because when grapes are heated, they actually produce plasma. But obviously not like this. And a throwback to one of my first videos ever, we're going to be making plasma with grapes using our…
I'm going to show you how to simply turn air into nitric acid using electricity. The process is simple. We're going to need to generate a high-voltage electrical arc. So our first step is going to be finding something that can produce enough voltage. Because we need higher voltage, we can't rely on something like a 9-volt battery used in my previous videos. Now you might be wondering how I'm able to do this. Well, the ingredients in air are majorly nitrogen, so we just need to find a way to separate it. Once we separate the gas, we just put it inside of water, then distill it. Then you're left over with some nitric acid. So I need to find a way to separate the air from the nitrogen inside of this bag. Now I could be wrong, but when air gets extremely hot, nitrogen and the air separate. And there's a lot of easy ways to produce heat. But we're going to need something way hotter than this. Something like this still isn't even close. And as shown in some of my other videos, even thermite isn't going to be hot enough to do what we need. At this point, you're probably thinking, man, I've seen all these insanely hot things. What on earth is possibly going to work? And as insane as it sounds, all you actually need is a grape. This is because when grapes are heated, they actually produce plasma. But obviously not like this. And a throwback to one of my first videos ever, we're going to be making plasma with grapes using our microwave. Cut the grape almost entirely in half, only leaving a small strip of skin. Now, while that's cool, it's nowhere near sustainable. So we're going to have to turn to electricity to make our plasma. And like I said earlier, unfortunately, we can't use a 9-volt battery. So we're going to need to find an alternative source of power. And my first idea was this charging cable that I found. Now, this would probably work, but I've torn apart so many charging cables for videos, I figured a change of pace would be nice. And since I recently bought this power bank, I figured I'd go ahead and give it a shot. As you can see, when I turn it on, it produces 31 volts, which I really don't think is going to be enough. If I touch the two wires together, they spark. So now I just need to figure out a way to make this gap between two pieces of wire. But no matter how close I hold it, it's just impossible to get it to arc. So because our power bank doesn't work, we're going to need something that produces a lot of electricity that can still plug inside of your wall, which brings me to this neon power supply. I also don't know if 10k means 10,000 volts, but maybe that's the volts. But as you can see, it also plugs into our walls. And it also conveniently has these two points at the end, which we're going to use to connect to our wires. This looks like the perfect example of what we need. So let's go try it out. Before it's usable, we're going to need to strip the wires. And you can actually do this with scissors if you do it carefully. Simply cut in a circle around the wire, making sure not to cut the wire, then pull off the rubber. Now we're going to find a way to bridge the arc between these two pieces of copper. So go ahead and grab some cardboard. Now wrap the wire around your copper wire. Now stick your copper wire underneath and through a piece of cardboard. Keep them about an inch apart. To say safe, never have this thing on while you're running it. Only once you have it completely set up, then plug it in. Now just plug it in and turn it on. And we're left with an arc of electricity, which is exactly what we need. Make sure not to run this for too long because now my setup's on fire. So we've achieved plasmifying the air, which brings us to the next step to make nitric acid. Essentially, we need some sort of container that is capable of doing three things. It needs an access port to be able to produce the arc, then through some sort of tubing, we'll need to pump air into the arc. Now once the air is plasmified, we'll need somewhere for that air to travel into a cup full of water. Now you can use a mason jar for this by simply poking three holes inside of the metal lid, but this thingy that I have looks so much cooler, so we're going to use this. See, we have air coming into this pipe, then the air gets plasmified in the middle, and the air exits into this jar full of water. But there's a few flaws with this. As you can see, each one of these gaps isn't sealed, and there's no way to stop this from arcing down at the bottom. What's going to pump in the air, and what's going to seal the holes? The answer to the first one was solved quite easily by picking up an aquarium fish pump. Why you need something like this is because it slowly pumps the air, unlike other things that might do it too fast. And it will conveniently plug into your wall as well. Now that we have our first problem solved, we need to work on something that will seal the air. And my initial instinct is to use plumber's putty, because this withstands high temperatures. So let's go ahead and give this a try. It's important that we use something like plumber's putty, because if I was to try hot glue, it would just remelt, because if you remember, this thing produces a whole lot of heat, which will just melt the hot glue. Now to make working with these copper wires a little bit easier, I went ahead and stabbed some holes in a milk jug, that way the copper wire wouldn't touch. And I forgot to mention, for this experiment, I'm using 12 gauge wire. Now this should create a good enough seal. So we have it sealed with the putty, and then taped so it doesn't fall down. I've also lengthened the wires, that way it can arc. Now let's go ahead and connect the two wires to see how well it does. Now if I was to turn this on, it would most likely arc here. So let's go ahead and put something in between it, that way it doesn't do that. Instead, it arcs where we need it to, up top. Now we just need to turn it on and see how it performs. What we've created is a Jacob's ladder, and there's some controversy as to whether or not this is the best solution. But what I do know is that it's not great for our transformer to keep on short-circuiting like that. So for the longevity of our system, it's better to not have a Jacob's ladder. Now let's connect the pump and our water supply. Now instead of the mason jar, it's better to have something tall and thin. So I've replaced it with this graduated cylinder. Okay, we got everything cleaned up. We have our pump running right here. As you can see, it is arcing properly. And then we have all of it coming down into this little solution of water down here. Now that we've produced our nitric gas from this thing, it's going to be put inside of our water. Now this is cool, but what if I could just get rid of all of it? And to make this way simpler, we're just going to replace it with a piece of plywood, two metal straws, and a mason jar. Now let me show you why this system is just so much easier. Not only do these straws act as our copper wire, they also act as our tubing, making this impossible to leak. So now the air comes into this straw, arcs up at the top, and exits through this one, completely making the system 10 times easier. Instead of the metal straw, you could swap it out for some copper tubing. But since it is considerably larger, it is harder to fit the tubing on. Obviously this is too big, so we're going to cut it down. Mind you that this is optional. I'm going to use these pieces of plywood as a way to raise our project. I'm going to use this Dremel tool to drill a hole in my plywood to fit our straws. So we've drilled the two holes, and then I used super glue to seal it in the top. Now we can just put our mason jar over it. We still need to put some clay in between these two things, or plumber's putty. So we've sealed it and connected our wires. Now it's time to turn it on and put our tubing in. So our fish pump pipe doesn't fit on our straw. Instead, connect it to your latex tubing. Now take your latex tubing and put that on the straw. To pressure test, use a bottle of soapy water. So I just tested all of our seals, and we have no leaks, so we're good to go. Now we just need to put our mason jar on and seal it as well. For this, I'm going to be using JB Weld, but you can use anything, like super glue. So we have the system properly running, and we have no leaks. So let's go see how much nitric acid we can produce. See, this system is much more aesthetically appealing. The system works pretty similar. We still have the electric arc in the middle, but that tubing makes it a lot simpler because the air enters and exits through there, and then bubbles out into the water right here. By holding this white paper behind, you can really see how much nitric gas we've produced. The taller and thinner your pot is, the better it'll work. So I've replaced it with this flower pot instead of the mason jar. Just as a warning, this thing does get really hot, so maybe a fan to help cool it down would work, or just do it outdoors. Now the best way to see if this is actually nitric acid is just to use baking soda, because this stuff should react and form CO2, which will bubble out. Let's go ahead and leave this thing running for a few hours to see what the results are. And to all the people that correct the guess that I was making the Birkeland Ide reactor, here is your shout-out. And if you want a shout-out in my next vid, if you can correctly tell me what this is for, I'll give you one. Okay, so it's dark out, and it's time to test out how much nitric acid we made. Okay, so if I add baking soda to this, it should react. And as you can see, it does bubble just a little. Here I have a penny. I doubt this will do much, but if it's a high concentration, it would. It's not gonna do anything though. So this does produce nitric acid, but my gap was so small that it didn't produce much. If I had that Jacob's ladder, I do think it would have helped a lot. So we found a way to turn air into nitric acid, but now I want to turn dirt into potassium nitrate. I have solids possible online, and if someone knows how to do it, if you can email me, that would be great. Now we did make nitric acid, and this is a real way to do it, but what you saw on the thumbnail was clickbait, and it worked because you clicked on the video. Now I spent a long time making this video, and if you could consider subscribing, I'd really appreciate it.