What is Salt Peter?
Salt peter typically refers to the chemical compound potassium nitrate, though it may also refer to sodium nitrate. Salt peter was once collected from decomposing material, but today, it is generally manufactured by treating sodium nitrate, mostly mined in Chile, with potassium chloride and collecting the precipitate. Salt peter was one of the ingredients of the first gunpowder, black powder. Today, it has many uses in both the laboratory and the larger world. Black powder, oxidized with salt peter, is still used for small novelty explosives, such as fireworks and model rockets, though firearms typically use newer types of gunpowder. Salt peter is most widely used in manufacturing nitric acid, however, which is in turn used to make Trinitrotoluene (TNT) and other modern explosives. Nitric acid has many other applications as well, such as its use as a reagent in the laboratory and as an ingredient in plant fertilizers. Salt peter is also used as a fertilizer and as a stump remover, as i
