Making nitric acid

[ironious]

Hello, Im trying to make some nitric acid to recover gold from mercury. It is extremely expensive so purchasing it is out of the question. I was told that I could mix potassium nitrate into hydrochloric acid until the potassium nitrate no longer dissolves. I will be left with a nitric acid solution that I will be able to use to dissolve mercury. I can then recover the mercury by dissolving aluminum foil in it. Im just checking to make sure this information is correct.

Thanks

[jdurg]

That won't work because the little bit of nitric acid that you'll create will mix with the HCl leaving you with a very dilute solution of aqua regia which will readily dissolve gold.

 

The way to make nitric acid without buying any is to take 98% sulfuric acid, dissolve some potassium nitrate in there, heat it up, then distill off the HNO3 that's produced. There are many videos out there on YouTube which will demonstrate this.

[frosch45]

Just make sure that your condenser's cold enough.... I had a bad expierence with that once

[Aaron_S]

Would NH4NO3 work if you didn't have any KNO3?

 

just a thought