Oleic acid oxidation?

[Agent_Smith]

I'm reading in a text that treatment of oleic acid (when being used as a surfactant; attraction via it's polar 'head') yields the 'oleate ion' which 'chemisorbs strongly' onto the coated particles.

I'm at a loss for what this means.  I can't see how treatment with nitric acid forms the oleate ion;  my other sources say that nitric will oxidize oleic to any number of unwanted things.

The text of the bit of the book I'm reading is as follows:

"After cooling the product is acidified to pH 5 using nitric acid.  The oleate ion produced chemisorbs strongly onto the particles, and the precipitate coagulates and falls out of solution.  The coagulation may also be accompanied by the appearance of a thin film of oleic acid on the surface of the supernatant liquid which is unabsorbed oleate ions reconverted to oleic acid in solution."

I'm somewhat bewildered by this.  I'd be willing to just give it a shot and say to hell with the mechanism, but I don't have HNO3.  Does anyone know what this means?  Or more practically, does anyone know if I can substitute another acid for the nitric to achieve the same effect?

[Lilienthal]

That doesn't make sense to me