Does anyone know a brand name of Salt Peter?

Does anyone know what is is used for, apart from making Smoke Bombs eTc?

Does anyone know if it is available in England, and if so it's name (What is on he bottle/box??

Or how about making it.? Does it conatain Pottasium Nitrate.

I heard it may be a diaretic for animals??!!

Thanks if you can help.

Effigy

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.../\/Effigy\/\...

it does contain potassium nitrate, there's a thread on this in better living through chemistry so go there

salt peter is unavalible in england because the ira use to blow stuff up although some chemist ones out of town generally still have some supplies from years back which they will sell under the counter, someone also told me you can distill it from fertillizer don't know how, don't do it though i know a guy who made gun powder with it in his bedroom it started to burn some how! got out of control so he sprayed it with a co2 extingsher which spread it everywhere still alight i think he was 13 at the time(kids hehehehe)

I know the army uses it in the food of recruits in boot camp. it keeps people from having an erection. this might sound silly but go to an army surplus store.

That is very silly. Don't even waste your time.

Saltpeter does not contain potassium nitrate. It IS potassium nitrate. In the united states you can get it at pharmacies and sometimes at hydroponics shops (though I'd doubt you have one of those around the corner). In the UK you can buy the stuff in 55 pound bags at agricultural supply warehouses, and for dirt cheap to boot. You can always order potassium nitrate from SSAerospace.com or PyroTek.com .

Simple, really.

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Day must fade to night,
Night must give in to sunrise,
I watch, silently.

~A Haiku, Minami Sasake

i live in canada, where can i get it. theres none in the drugstores

boil two gallons water pour over five gallons rich soil and through a filter of 2 cups wood ashand linnen cotton if you don't hae any. boil water down to half volume. add gallon of alchohol pour through coffe filter. low purity unless you put the crystals in water and repeat. you can boil 3 cups of this along with two cups sugar and two table spoons of iron oxide in two cups water until it acheive the consistancy of oatmeal then pour it on to a sheet of tinfoil using a butter knife to put a 1 inch grid into the goop deepening it every 20 minutes until it is soft but not sticky and granulate it by pushing it through a screen. makes a handy gunpowder substitute.

saltpetre is potassium nitrate is KNO3

sometimes called niter

i live in canada too...
in a crappy small village of 2500 people and i can get potassium nitrate in 2 of the 3 pharmacies here... and i've never looked for it in the third one...
its a great oxidizer (hence the use in hydroponics)
i get it in a smallish white container with blue writing, its right next to the epsoms salts in the same style of container

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- - ciao, Mark

i am from canada how much does it cost and what are the recieps

You can buy it off of Pyrotek under the name Potassium Nitrate for pretty cheap. I wouldn't mess with tring to make it out of dirt because it would be very unpure and dangerous to use. If you can buy it at a local pharmacy though it would work. I called some plant shops and around here no one seems to have it.

[This message has been edited by Pyroman4ever (edited 06-19-2001).]

Potassium nitrate (KNO3)is used as a fertiliser (and in 'hydroponics',meaning growing plants without soil)'cause it contains K and N wich are absolutely necessary for the plants.The name 'saltpeter' come from it's mineral origin.
'Chile saltpeter' is NaNO3,found in great deposits in Chile(surprise!).It is higroscopic.
"Norway saltpeter' is Ca(No3)2.The medieval European armies boiled this with wood ash(contains potassium carbonate)and so was made KNO3 for gunpowder.
KNO3 as a mineral is called "Indian saltpeter' and it has organic origin,same as "Chile saltpeter'.
Another way for obtaining KNO3 is using NH4NO3 and wood ash(containing K2CO3).The ammonium 'carbonate' will not be a problem.

Potassium nitrate (KNO3)is used as a fertiliser (and in 'hydroponics',meaning growing plants without soil)'cause it contains K and N wich are absolutely necessary for the plants.The name 'saltpeter' come from it's mineral origin.
'Chile saltpeter' is NaNO3,found in great deposits in Chile(surprise!).It is higroscopic.
'Norway saltpeter' is Ca(No3)2.The medieval European armies boiled this with wood ash(contains potassium carbonate)and so was made KNO3 for gunpowder.
KNO3 as a mineral is called "Indian saltpeter' and it has organic origin,same as 'Chile saltpeter'.
Another way for obtaining KNO3 is using NH4NO3 and wood ash(containing K2CO3).The ammonium 'carbonate' will not be a problem.

hey anthracis, can you go over that procedure for obtaining KNO3 from NH4NO3?

What do you mean?Waste of NH4NO3(indeed)?Or you think the method is not working?

neither, i was just asking you to describe how to do it.

K2CO3 extracted from wood ash it has an alcaline reaction;K is replacing ammonium from NH4NO3.
By heating the solution,NH3 is eliminated together with CO2.KNO3 may be cristallised after that.
I guess the reaction is something like that:
K2CO3+NH4NO3---->KNO3+NH3+H2CO3(CO2+H2O)
I'll try this to tell you if it works good.Personally I think that KNO3 is less valuable than NH4NO3.

Heating an alkali and an ammonium salt will evolve ammonia gas. Essentialy its a displacement reaction the more reactive anion replacing the weaker (NH4).

NaOH + NH4NO3 ---> NaNO3 + NH3 + H2O

It works with any alkali I think.