Have you heard of TNT, nitroglycerin and Semtex? What do they have in common? If you’re not really familiar with chemicals, the only compound that is present in these or is a derivative is nitric acid.
Nitric acid is extremely harmful. It is highly corrosive, strongly reactive, a powerful oxidizer, and a poison. In fact, the material safety data sheet states that it has an extreme health rating of 4, which means it’s a poison; a severe reactivity rating of 3 due to its strong oxidizing properties; and an extreme contact rating of 4 signifying its corrosive capabilities.
However, it is also these properties that make this acid very valuable in many diverse applications. It is very important in the esterification and nitration processes of organic substances, as well as in the manufacture of fertilizers, plastics, dyes, nitrates, sulfuric acid and, as mentioned above, explosives. It is also widely used in water treatment, used nuclear fuel reprocessing, as well as cleaning and coating metal surfaces.
Nitric acid in fertilizers
Ammonium nitrate, an excellent fertilizer component, is made by mixing ammonia and nitric acid. It is one of the basic chemical ingredients in the fertilizer industry. In fact, approximately 80% of the chemical is used for the production of fertilizers.
However, the excessive use of fertilizers and their runoff results in the eutrophication of our waterways causes environmental degradation and poses a great threat to plant and animal life. Eutrophication is the nutrient overload in bodies of water that triggers algal blooms and other plants that grow out of control. This phenomenon consumes almost all of the dissolved oxygen available in the water while robbing other plants and animals of oxygen.
Nitric acid as a cleaning agent
Due to its strong acid properties, it is used for serious and deep cleaning processes such as those in the food, pharmaceutical, healthcare and cleaning industries. However, also because this same compound is highly corrosive and highly hazardous, its application as a cleaning agent must be handled with extreme caution.
In brewery, it is used to remove inorganic deposits and beer stone. This ternary acid also has effective antimicrobial properties even when used in more stable and less hazardous solutions with phosphoric acid. It is also used to clean ICP-MS cones in glass manufacturing, but special attention must be paid to the concentration of the acid in the cleaning solution. Also, the frequency could be as rare as once a month to prevent corrosion of metals.
nitric acid in explosives
Nitric acid is extremely reactive and, in its pure form, can be highly unstable. Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and nitroglycerin are two highly explosive derivatives of nitric acid.
TNT is the result of three groups of nitrogen dioxide added to toluene. It contains stable and tightly bound compounds of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen, so when it is ignited, it releases a lot of energy. And as a result of these tightly packed nitro groups, TNT is an unstable chemical.
Nitroglycerin, on the other hand, is the nitric acid triester of glycerol. Like TNT, a glycerin molecule has three nitrate groups attached to a hydrocarbon fragment. This more common use in the production of dynamite and in its full strength is comparable to the most powerful explosives developed today, such as C-4 and RDX.
This acid is a very dangerous chemical, although it can be quite stable when handled properly and stored in safe conditions. Always follow label instructions and practice safety precautions when handling nitric acid. Despite its explosive, corrosive, and strongly reactive capabilities, it is a key chemical in many industrial applications precisely because of these very properties.