Abstract Properties such as thermal insulation, excellent structural and chemical stability, resistance to high temperatures make the zirconium compounds, their oxides and nitrides are of great interest to the scientific community. In the present work, the production of ZrN, ZrO and ZrC from a highly energetic ball mill is experimentally studied. The synthesized powders were characterized by X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy and Scanning Electron Microscopy. The spectra performed demonstrate the ZrN, ZrO and ZrC formation, in addition the images obtained by SEM show a considerable increase in the size of the particles, since initially they were at 100 nm and were obtained in the order of 250 nm.