Nitrogen chemistry is important. It's obviously needed as fertilizer, so the thought of going to collecting urine but then wasting it on anything other than growing more food is uncomfortable to me. So few plants fixate nitrogen, and they fixate so little, that to pull it back out of the ground and then use it for ammunition is just a mistake.
And you need this stuff for other things too. Can't even make proper sausage or bacon without it.
We're probably all familiar with the Haber-Bosch process, which was a fairly straightforward proposition... you just trade energy (fossil fuels) for nitrogen, and it goops out ammonia on the other end. But a few years before that there was another process called Birkeland Eyde.
Birkeland Eyde
This process trades electricity (high voltage) for nitric acid. Which brings me to this crazy European:
Andreas the Alchemist - Homebrew Birkeland Eyde
He claims some modest-but-ridiculous output, something like a gallon per day of high concentration nitric acid. This is not a trickle charge off of you 100W solar panel you bought at Costco though. I think it's 5kW, more than most people use for their homes.
This form of nitrogen is pretty practical. You could turn it in ammonia with alkiki, you can turn it into salts for curing, etc. With practice and an overabundance of caution, turning it into proper smokeless powder and primers is within the realm of reason.
It might be wise for anyone with ambitions for making one of these to consider a simpler power supply approach.
