What is Nitric Acid?
Nitric acid is a highly corrosive liquid which is commonly used as a chemical reagent and important additive for the manufacture of fertilizers and explosives. Colorless and fuming, it gives an acrid and choking odor when heated. It is naturally found in acid rain, when nitrogen oxide gases dissolve in water vapor. Nitric acid is also known as hydrogen nitrate.

The first recorded use of nitric was around 800 AD by Jabir ibn Hayyan, also known in the West as Gerber. Early alchemists called it aqua fortis (strong water), aqua valens (powerful water), or spirit of nitre. During the late Renaissance, Johann Rudolf Glauber was first to make nitric acid by heating potassium nitrate with concentrated sulfuric acid. The resulting product is sodium sulfate decahydrate, popularly known as ÒGlauberÕs salt.Ó 

In 1778, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier discovered its oxygen content, while in 1861, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac and Claude Louis Berthollet established its chemical composition. Finally, Wilhelm Ostwald, a German chemist, developed a manufacturing process for nitric acid which became crucial for the outcome of World War I. Its consumption peaked in the late 1980s but declined significantly through 1994 primarily because of the economic downturn in the Slavic region. Since then, there is a continuing upward trend.