"Nitric acid also plays an important part in chemical industries, especially since the development of the manufacture of explosives on a large scale. Potassium nitrate, which has been known and valued for so long, is still an indispensable ingredient of gunpowder. Since the introduction of the nitrate of soda from the Chili deposits, nitric acid has been prepared from it (instead of from the more expensive nitrate of potash) by the old process of distillation with sulphuric acid. At the same time nitrate of soda is now largely converted into the potash salt by double decomposition with chloride of potassium. This process, so simple from a chemical point of view, could however only be carried out on an extensive scale after the rich deposits of potash salts at Stassfurt had been discovered; and it required careful chemical investigation to make those salts available, for their composition had to be worked out, and proper methods for separating them from one another had to be devised."
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