Filtering AP - Archive File

[Anthony]

daturk2000
A new voice
Posts: 6
From: afganistan
Registered: FEB 2001
posted February 22, 2001 04:07 PM
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first off im a newbie- so pls dont give me a grilling!! In "the makshift arsenal" it says that after making AP crystals, you should filter them out of the water by using newspaper. It also says that the crytals r v.sensitive by friction, and shock. How do i filter the crystals out safely without blowing my head off!?? after i have got the crystals do i have 2 wash them? and if i do/dont what do i do with them after that?? i would have searched this in the past archives but i kept gettin an error mesg that didnt let me in! any help would b very apprecciated!!
[This message has been edited by daturk2000 (edited February 22, 2001).]


atropine
Frequent Poster
Posts: 129
From: wales
Registered: OCT 2000
posted February 22, 2001 04:27 PM
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There are a number of posts on AP. Do a site search. I would edit this post before you spoil your rep forever. first impressions are the most dictating.


HMTD Factory
Frequent Poster
Posts: 217
From:
Registered: FEB 2001
posted February 22, 2001 04:28 PM
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What I do is put them on a stack of newspaper, the water will be sucked away.


Stone
Frequent Poster
Posts: 140
From:
Registered: SEP 2000
posted February 23, 2001 02:10 AM
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AP isn't very sensitive when it is wet, so don't worry. Just don't drop it or throw it around. I've found coffee filters to be the best, you don't loose ANY AP and it filters quicker than most other papers. Also, it is really smooth so it is easy to get the AP off the paper when all the water/solution has filtered away.
Once you have the AP in the filter, just keep pouring water through until it is completely white, you can pour a solution of Sodium Bicarbonate though if you want to be extra cautious.
By the way, the forum has sections for a reason. AP = Acetone Peroxide, meaning it belongs in "Explosive Peroxides".

[darkdontay]

I do not see the relevance of bringing this one back? I'm lost in its usefulness? Any how I just filter it through a old tee shirt with cold water for about three minutes and that seems to work well. I'm not too picky at all anymore when it comes to making AP.

[Anthony]

It, and similar threads are brought back because they contain *very* basic information. Useless to many members, but useful to newbies and will mean they don't have to post to ask for such information! Because the old threads were archived, we lack the basic info we used to discuss, leaving a large intellectual gap that real newbies have to cross. Now it's being reintergrated.

BTW, a square of fine weave Tshirt cloth works for me too. As does laying it on a newspaper to wick away the remaining moisture :)

[darkdontay]

I have used newspaper before, but I have palced several shhets down, then smeared the AP down into a thin layer [not too thin though] and then addee several sheet of newspaper ontop of it. I then put on some weight. The newspaper definatnly cuts the drying time way down. I gues luckly not much at all seems to stick to the paper either.

[Stone]

Time for a newbie question :)

Is there any other methods of filtering AP?
I've used coffee filters and this works really well except for large amounts it can take hours. I've also used T-shirt material but a small amount of water comes out and then the AP crystals clogged up the material so no more fluid could flow through the material.
I'll try some other materials, but I was just wondering if anyone does it a different way.

Thanks

[Einsteinium]

If you have a filtering flask, a buchner funnel and a water aspirator (or any half-assed appartus that can do the same job ;) ), you could filter AP under reduced pressure. It definitivly goes faster that way, often an hundred times faster than gravity filtration.

[Anthony]

You could always use capilary action to remove the liquid and leave the AP in the original container.

[zippoxiv]

I have found a fine wire mesh to work out well. Although you do need to neutralize the solution with bicarb solution and dilute with a large quantity of water. Otherwise your leftover acid ofen feels the need to attack the metal of the wire mesh. I have found bowl shaped strainers at most grocery stores, and although the AP crystals will most likely be big enough to fit through the holes they will clog the mesh and work to retain most of the precipitate. If you use the mesh in conjunction with the tshirt method the cloth will catch any crystals that fall through the mesh. I found it to be quicker than the tshirt method alone and even though your filtered AP manages to retain a larger amount of water since you cannot effectively "squeeze" out some of the liquid after a night of drying on newspaper its still ready for use.

[Stone]

Stupidly, I thought the AP was clogging the T-shirt material... It wasn't, the liquid was causing the material to become air tight and cause a vacuum in the container, once i let some air in it works great :rolleyes:

[darkdontay]

Hey at least you are learning, and problem solving on your own.. Nice to see.

Me myself I stil hjust use a cut coke bottle and a Tee with some duct tape, very crude but it gets the job done... I'm more interested in keeping everything capable of being downo "On Site" with materials that would not draw attention.. Though if a little effort to expand and enhance the yeild and product I have no reservations against taking some extra steps.

[Cricket]

I used to use the t-shirt because it is much faster than most anything else. I would filter with it, and run it under the water to wash it cleaner instead of just putting it back in water and refiltering. When I filtered it for the last time, I would squeze it to cut many hours off the drying time. Then after a couple batches, I noticed that when I used the t-shirt, I had about 1/2-1/3 the yield compared to the coffee filter method! I think most of the product was lost when I ran it under the water while still in the filter. Anyway, just thought I would say this to help someone avoid learning the hard way (esp. with 3%!) and loosing a good bit of AP. Good times.

Oh yea, I like the idea of drying AP in between paper. Thats the worst thing, waiting on something to dry that you don't want to heat up or put lights on.

[Keyser Soze]

The AP will dry even faster if you put it on newspaper and then right next to a dehumidifier. Even when not spread out, 30 grams of AP is dry in a few hours.

[darkdontay]

I would lay my batch in the middle of several thinkness's of newspaper then place more paper over it and put like a book on it.. Never had it blow up and, if I would change it around, move it to a new palce arounf every ten minutes I could have a nice size bathc dried in about a hour... sounds like that crap eyeglass ad.. Get your AP dried in about a hour.. :p

[None]

Hello, my friend had a dream that ~10g of AP was made with 50% H2O2 and HCl as a catalyst no water was added so the precipitate was fairly dry after the reaction was complete. It was left for 2 days, and when some bicarb solution was added, most of the AP stayed in a large cake. This cake is hard to break up with a satay stick even after leaving it in the solution for a day. Do people think it would be safe to break up under water? Would it become less caked up if washed well and left to dry? Is there any other advice people could give? Thank you, and sorry if this seems like a simple question, but my friend has had little experience with AP in his dreams.

[jfk]

personaly when i make AP i filter it with watmans low ash, medium speed filter paper which i routienely steal from my high school chemistry labs, I filter/wash it 3 times with deionised water then once with 1 tsp/litre sodium bicarb/deionised water to nutralise any remaining acid. then i was/filter it once more with de-natured ethanol (99.98%), i use denatured because you gotta have a liscence to buy absolute ethanol in new zealand, where as they dont care about de-natured because its got bitrex in it. dont use methanol how ever, i find that it dissolves a small ammount of the AP in it, rendering it unfulterable and also non-flammable. i wonder if anyone could enlighten me on why it does this. (it only dissolves about 1% of the AP but its still an annoyance)..........anyway back the the last filtration with denatured ethanol - i leave it on the filter paper on a stack of newspapers and in about 4 minutes (in my cupboard) its quite dry and ready to use.

[Efraim_barkbit]

to "none": try dissolve the AP in some acetone, then let it evaporate and after that it should be fine.
or maybe it would become soft enough to break apart easy if you just put on a little acetone

[jfk]

yes, acetone will work im sure.\

to none. i know it was a dream but 50% H2O2 will have water in it. if you used the 30mL H2O2/82mL acetone ratio you would ahve about 15mL water...the AP shouldnt be in a hard cake, IMHO. but im sure acetone will do the trick in breaking it up, and im also sure that it wont explode if youbreak it up under water/ethanol/methanol/acetone.

[rooster]

I can understand that the AP seems dry. When i use 35% H2O2 the material that comes out is almost solid.
If you dissolve the cake in water, the acetone will get the water from the cake, and when evapourating the acetone again, it will still have the water left. It must be dried off another way.

[kingspaz]

if its AP it should NOT dissolve in water....

[Efraim_barkbit]

when filtering my last batch of AP I thought of this thread and decided to share my filtering method. It saves me a lot of trouble compared to my shitty attempts to filter during my first two batches. It might not be something for those who wants their stuff washed and dried really fast, but it works very good for me, it´s not as messy as i belive using a T-shirt would be, and much more economical for the yield..

I use the cut off top of a plastic coke bottle as a funnel, and filter through a coffefilter. I put the whole thing in a glass jar and pour water throug it., then some bicarb. solution, and after that more water until pH ~7.

Improvement of method: put the thing in the sink with water running at same speed as it passes through the filter, add bicarb solution manually, then back under the water until pH neutral.

BTW, I store my AP in the filter, still sitting in the funnel, in a old freezer, It is in my opinion very good, because this way, much of the water will get out of the AP, but it wont dry, and I can easily take out the amount that I need and dry it between newspaper sheets.

It saves me from the worries of having a heap of dry AP lying around, and since it´s not drying, I can still get it ready for use faster than if it was stored under water.

Oh, and the freezer is turned OFF..

EDIT: the first part, and the last..

[kingspaz]

the only problem i can see is that you for proper neutralisation you must put the AP into bicarb solution properly instead of just washing. then ALL the crystals will be surrounded by the bicarb instead of the solution just following channels in the AP bulk in the filter paper. thus only the edges of the channels get neutralised. also, the filter paper is pretty porous so is not ever going to be neutralised. better neutralise the AP as suggested above an then you can store it in the now slightly basic filter paper which will ensure a complete lack of acidity.

[Arthis]

You filter your AP in a coffee filter ? You should use some old T-shirt, the water goes through much more easily, and it's not destroyed too fast. I don't know you but when I used coffee filters they were often destroyed. Pretty annoying.

[Efraim_barkbit]

After I starded to put the coffe filter in a funnel, I have never had the problem of the filters breaking, the filter is supported by the funnel, so the weight of the AP+water is taken up by it instead of the filter. Before I used the funnel, the filters broke very often and that was very annoying, but now I have no problems with it.

When using a T-shirt, doesn´t some AP escape through the holes in the cloth?, and it seems quite messy, but that might just be how I imagine it?

I forgot to mention, that when pouring the bicarb. solution through, I stir around in the AP to get it all neutralized. but I guess some AP might still be left unneutralized, so I should probably lower everything down in a bucket of bicarb solution and let it sit for some time.
(or if someone has a better idea?)

[Imperial]

I have tried many methods (well three) of filtering AP, and here is my experience with them:

1. The coffee filter worked very well. It was slow and took a long time, but if you have time to spare this is a safe method which will give a very good yield of AP.

2. The T-shirt method was excellent also, and was very fast. Using an old T-shirt taped to a cut up coke bottle as some have suggested is great, but another good method if you don't want to use scungy coke bottles, etc is just to use the T-shirt material instead of filter paper and use it in a funnel. This is fast and effective, although it gave me a little less final yield than the coffee filters did. This may have been due to other factors, though, so I still recommend this method.

3. The newspaper method works well and is the fastest method of them all, but this one is somewhat unsafe in my experience. I did one batch and it worked very well, giving me nice reasonably sized AP crystals and it dried in the least time ever with no (well very little) lost yield. I decided to do this again, but here in Australia it gets quite hot, which sensitised the AP and it ended up detonating in our garden shed when I left it alone to filter out. Nobody was hurt and nothing was damaged, but I was pretty pissed that I had lost a perfectly good batch of AP. This method is probably good in colder areas, but NOT good if you use a metal shed on a hot day (in retrospect, I don't see how I could even have considered leaving it there in the first place).


So my verdict is that the filtering methods (T-shirt and coffee filter) are the safest, but the newspaper method gives the best yield. It all depends on the circumstances.

[knowledgehungry]

IIRC it is not a good thing to have Organic peroxides basic, so I think a quick rinse with the bicarb followed by another rinse with H2O is best.