Expedient Nitric Distillation

[john_smith]

I have the misfortune to live in a dorm right now. The toilet facilities (and a small kitchen) are shared by two rooms/four people. My roommate is generally so-so, but the guys from the neighboring room are real assholes with a record of voluntary snitching. So basically I have neither running water nor a fume hood.
So far, I've been thinking about two ways of setting up the still:
1) taking to the woods. At least no fridge is needed here, because snow and ice are abundant.
2) setting it up right there on the window sill with the vent tube reaching outside. Come to think about it, maybe even placing the condenser outside and filling the outer tube with antifreeze (the window is in two vertically opening parts and it's -4C outside at the moment).

The questions:

1) How critical is the proper cooling in NA manufacture?
2) How noxious is the NO2?
3) How bad does it stain? I live on the top floor and think about using a piece of PVC pipe as a stovepipe preferably reaching over the roof level. Is it necessary - or, is it enough?
4) Does somebody here have any experience with expedient nitric production in general, and does the setup described above make any sense at all?

Thanks.

Edit: deleted my ASCII artwork because it seems that extra spaces get deleted...so you've just got to guess...

<small>[ October 21, 2002, 04:40 AM: Message edited by: john_smith ]</small>

[Marvin]

Dont make nitric acid in the same place you live/sleep/work. Whereever you do make it needs good ventillation, even if it makes the room freezing in the process, if the room reminds you of reporters on the outskirts of a hurricane, the room is well ventilated, better yet is to do it outside. The woods are ideal, and snow/ice make excellent coolers for the distillate bottle. NO2 is exceedingly toxic, fortunatly distillation only makes small amounts of it, done right that is. Nitric acid vapour is just nasty, as youd expect a volatile corrosive to be. Temperture is less important than quantity of heat removed, an air condensor, even if the outside air is at -4, simply will not do. A bucket of cold water with the condensing container, eg a whiskey bottle, is fine. The container you must distill from needs to be one that wont shatter from temperature differences, this is usually the hardest part when just beginning. I used chemistry set test tubes, quite large ones, and the amount I got each batch was tiny, like 10ml. I used a wax impregnated cork with a 90 degree bend glass tube from it. This worked ok, most plastics get attacked.

Its very tempting to want to scale up before you understand the nature of the chemicals. This is a very big mistake. Nowerdays, Id use a quickfit setup, which isnt cheep, but its very reliable. As for speed, time vanishes in large amounts for all the chemistry I do, this means if your making nitric acid in a poorly ventalated room, then you are exposed to the vapours for a long time (many hours). Just some suggestions from my very early days, if Id known what I know now, Id have made myself wait until I could do it properly, and safely. I know you wont, because I know what I was like then.

Lastly, how badly does it stain? It eats through all natural fibres surprisingly quickly. Its not a mop up job if it spills, its mop up (eg sodium bicarb) and buy new carpet.

[PYRO500]

Another thing I'll add is that PVC is unsutable for HNO3 production, as with viynl tubing. the only tubing I'd recomend for venting gas is Teflon (pfte) or Poly Ethylene (PE) I currently use the latter in my setup as something to connect a vacuum source to my still. I would not recomend distilling HNO3 inside at all. anything plastic etc that the NO2 gasses touch are going to be oxidized and turned to goo. Also the gasses will kill you as there very deadly.