Making Nitrates with 150,000 Volts

Take back your personal data with Incogni! Use code "hpirate" at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/hpirate In this video I'll be demonstrating how nitrates can be made from the ozone generated from high voltage discharges. This is different from the "Birkeland-Eyde" process, which uses a white-hot high voltage arc to create NO2 to synthesize Nitric Acid. With the ozone method, O3 is generated from either Corona discharge or Dielectric Barrier discharge, which is similar to corona but acts over a large area. Unlike arcs or sparks, these types of discharges are non-thermal plasmas, and theoretically they don't produce any oxides of nitrogen. Rather, they create ozone from atmospheric oxygen by the following reaction: 2O2 → 2O3 The Ozone (O3) is an extremely powerful and unstable oxidizer than can be used to synthesize a number of different compounds. When added to Ammonia (NH3), it forms ammonium nitrate by the following reaction: 2NH3 + 4O3 → NH4NO3 + 4O2 +H2O The ammonium nitrate can then be used as a fertilizer, converted into nitrous oxide, used to make nitric acid, or used as part of a mixture for a blasting agent. I ran experiments with both large-gap / small area corona discharges at 150,000 volts, and small-gap / large area dielectric barrier discharges at a few volts. The dielectric barrier discharges produced more ozone per unit energy by far, which i determined by the use of an ozone meter. Unfortunately, when bubbling the ozone through a solution of ammonia, the maximum yield per unit energy was 0.33 grams of ammonium nitrate per kWh. In contrast, the maximum yield I achieved with a Birkeland-Eyde reactor was around 12.7g/kWh - nearly two orders of magnitude greater. The production of ozone still has lots of other uses that I intend to investigate in the future, such as the production of sulfuric acid directly from sulfur. It's also extremely effective and sterilizing large areas and removing bad smells due to it's ability to attack microbes and insects. This is similar to fumigating, but without the hassle of closing off an entire house. Ozone rapidly decays back into O2, so even if hazardous concentrations are present in a living space, they're typically safe after a few hours. In a future video I'll experiment with a higher power ozone generator fed by nearly 100% oxygen.