WI: Greeks discover nitric acid.

what it says on the tin. How will it affect the world, considering that nitric acid is one of the precursors to dynamite and other explosives?
 
what it says on the tin. How will it affect the world, considering that nitric acid is one of the precursors to dynamite and other explosives?

Interesting POD. It's tough to say. They probably would have made it by heating a combination of niter, alum and blue vitriol. In this process, the ingredients were expensive (they'd have to get saltpetre/niter from Africa) and the resulting amounts of nitric acid low. Nevertheless, if they work at it, they could produce enough to be getting on with.

If they're lucky, they'll combine it with ammonia (I'm not sure if they would have been capable of that, though) to produce ammonium nitrate, the world's most common fertilizer.

If the Greeks have an effective fertilizer, that could have huge effects on history. Hell, the process, once discovered, is easily duplicated. It'll spread around the world, and the population will likely skyrocket in Antiquity. That'll reshape everything.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
Interesting POD. It's tough to say. They probably would have made it by heating a combination of niter, alum and blue vitriol. In this process, the ingredients were expensive (they'd have to get saltpetre/niter from Africa) and the resulting amounts of nitric acid low. Nevertheless, if they work at it, they could produce enough to be getting on with.

If they're lucky, they'll combine it with ammonia (I'm not sure if they would have been capable of that, though) to produce ammonium nitrate, the world's most common fertilizer.

If the Greeks have an effective fertilizer, that could have huge effects on history. Hell, the process, once discovered, is easily duplicated. It'll spread around the world, and the population will likely skyrocket in Antiquity. That'll reshape everything.

Cheers,
Ganesha

If the components are expensive, I kinda doubt it'll fly well for a mass-produced fertilizer.
 
Alexander the Great just got a new siege weapon.

I'm not sure about that. It's a precursor, yes, but the chemistry required to turn nitric acid into a viable and useful explosive is extremely tricky. It wasn't perfected until 1860. Even nitroglycerin wasn't around until 1860. And black powder, which is actually not made from nitric acid but rather from saltpetre, wasn't created until the 900s, and that was in China.

In other words, I don't think explosives would be what the Greeks would use nitric acid for.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
If the components are expensive, I kinda doubt it'll fly well for a mass-produced fertilizer.

Well, I imagine that if they realize its effectiveness, an economy will spring up around producing it. Saltpetre was expensive in part because the trade routes were poorly developed, simply because it didn't have a lot of uses. Provide a use, and the cost will eventually drop. That's the theory, anyway.

Cheers,
Ganesha
 
Well, I imagine that if they realize its effectiveness, an economy will spring up around producing it. Saltpetre was expensive in part because the trade routes were poorly developed, simply because it didn't have a lot of uses. Provide a use, and the cost will eventually drop. That's the theory, anyway.

Cheers,
Ganesha

Fair enough.
 
Well, the first synthesis seems to have been by Paul of Taranto, in circa C12, using the very inefficient method mentioned below.

The materials (blue vitriol, nitre, and alum) would have been available to the Greeks (nitre can be obtained from urine, the usual method of collection before the discovery of the American deposits) , and the method (calcination) was simple enough.

However, I doubt this would give a practical yield sufficient for anything but alchemical purposes . Industrial quantities would have been out of the question.

I think that any Greek alchemist capable of this level of chemistry would probably have discovered gunpowder a good while before discovering nitric acid.
 
Given that nirtic acid was probably first identified by Arabic alchemists and was definately known in Europe by the 13th century and it still took 500 years for someone to turn it into explosives this seems unlikely.

I would say that is the Greeks did discover it them it is possible to have stable (ish) explosives by 1500 that would have major impacts on the wars (not to mention city walls) of the time.
 
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