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S. Toppholzer
May 7th, 2002, 03:32 PM
I was experimenting with different chlorates mixtures making a simple igniter for thermite.

I made up molten sugar-chlorate-sulfur mixtures (later I switched over to molten sorbitol - much lower melting point and safer).
Whenever I make the sugar(or sorbitol)-chlorate mixture it becomes rock hard after cooling and it doesn't pick up any moisture at all for months. But whenever I add sulfur (flowers of sulfur) to that mixture, it also hrdens very well but after one or two days it's softening up again and stays a syrupy mass. Not usable at all.

Is there any incompatibility between chlorates and sulfur or does sulfur pick up that much moisture?

Anthony
May 7th, 2002, 05:57 PM
Only the incompatibility which makes chlorate/sulphur mixes at risk from spontaneous ignition :)

kingspaz
May 7th, 2002, 06:54 PM
what happens is....
sulphur contains sulphurous oxides and residual H2SO4 and H2SO3. these acids can react with the chlorate anion.
H+ + ClO3- ---> HClO3
HClO3 is very unstable and prone to decompose explosively i think.

BoB-
May 8th, 2002, 05:13 PM
I'm going to have to call bullshit on you dude, Chlorate/Sugar spontaniously detonates when heated to sucroses' melting temp, and with Sulfur in the mix you would ruin a perfectly good pan and no one would call you "pretty" anymore.

xoo1246
May 8th, 2002, 05:37 PM
Make some bad(/crude) blackpowder with charcoal briquetts and add some aluminum. Works very well as a thermite starter.

Anthony
May 8th, 2002, 05:48 PM
In an attempt to make a KNO3/sucrose rocket fuel substitute with NaClO3, I tried this. I melted the NaClO3 and sprinkled a little sugar in, it burnt on contact. So I wouldn't say it detonates, but it certainly doesn't mix.

DarkAngel
May 8th, 2002, 08:52 PM
It absolutely wouldn't surprised me if this would detonate or atleast burn explosively.
Pre-heated mixtures always seem to burn much faster when ignited.

"and sprinkled a little sugar in, it burnt on contact. So I wouldn't say it detonates"
Anthony that doesn't say much don't you think?
When a mix of Suger and Chlorate are heated together you have a much larger quantity that would burn much more explosively than a little bit of suger sprinkled on some melted NaClO3.

Anthony
May 9th, 2002, 09:34 AM
Oh, for sure Darkangel, I don't know what would happen if you premixed the NaClO3/sugar and then tried to melt them together, I'd expect deflageration though.

I sprinkled the sugar to test whether it would ignite at the melting temp of NaClO3, i.e. I didn't want the above scenario to happen.

S. Toppholzer
May 10th, 2002, 02:24 PM
Well, I actually once had an accident with this. It caused all neighbours assmbling in front of my mom's house asking if all was OK because of all that thick smoke pillowing out of all openings of her home. 'twas hard to convince them not to call the firefighters...
I was heating up a soulution of chlorate and sugar and thus getting rid of the water, ahum. Well it was at one point almost without water and the next moment the pan when woosh! It was extremely hot fierce burning with flames up to the kitchen ceiling. It was terrible. Thanks God it didn't detonate as soem of you suggested.
Later I turned to sorbitol which needs much lower temperatures to melt.

DarkAngel
May 11th, 2002, 05:37 PM
Wow are you me?
No,i used KNO3 but the rest is the same.
Search for my old post i think it whas called "Major KNO3/Suger accident"

Cricket
May 11th, 2002, 07:04 PM
Wow, are both of you me? My kitchen ceiling is still burnt from the KNO3/sugar stuff. I had it in an old bread pan , the size of a loaf of bread and it all burnt. It was awesome and scarry too. I, in the panic, threw about 100 ml of water on it and it exploded with great force and knocked me down, and all this while being showered with molten/burning bits of the stuff (burnt little holes all over my arms). I did learn something though, one bread pan on KNO3/sucrose is enough to fill a good sized house with very thick white smoke and also, I would guess you don't even have to melt the stuff, just have a hot ignitor to set the stuff off and then it will melt all by its self. Thats what happened with me anyway, hardly any of it was liquid when it went off. Best done on a camp fire I think. I have no experience with chlorates though (for the best I think :) ).

Anthony
May 11th, 2002, 08:05 PM
The exact same thing happened to my brother. He'd read about the stuff in the anarchist crapbook and start heating a whole pan full of KNO3/sugar on the kitchen cooker. I guess he didn't stir it enough and the stuff on the bottom overheated and decomposed, the whole lot went up and I had to run in, see what was going on, grab the pan handle and carry the pan outside to let it finish buring. It was pretty damn fierce.

On the bright side, I kept the rest of the KNO3 (I had been unable to find some at the time) :)

Man, that was *years* ago!

<small>[ May 11, 2002, 07:24 PM: Message edited by: Anthony ]</small>

S. Toppholzer
May 13th, 2002, 07:11 AM
Well, judging by your experience, I guess I have been pretty lucky.
I used sodium chlorate weed killer (98% chlorate) and it was all done in a glaced ceramic pan. When it went off it was so hot and burned so strong I wasn't able coming cloes. After the fire was out (seemed to last half an eternity) Everything in the kichen was covered with some white powder (mybe fire extinguisher matter from heaven, lol), the stove had just one small slightly burned spot and the floor had some burnings from the pan sherds that flew everywhere. Everything else was still fine. Man. I think that was a real close call. I did this three times before in another kitchen - unimmaginable what would have happened there with a frail wooden cupboard right above the stove...

vulture
May 13th, 2002, 12:36 PM
The white stuff which covers everything as you describe it is NaCl from the sodiumchlorate decomposition. NaClO3 -> NaCl + 3/2 O2
Now this shows it burned very fiercly if even the NaCl was vaporized.

<small>[ May 13, 2002, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: vulture ]</small>

NoltaiR
May 13th, 2002, 12:39 PM
I had posted this in another thread somewhere, but anyways just to brief it up..

A while back when I was searching for a very cheap and fast alternative alternative to BP without the use of KNO3 as a oxidizer, I tried to make a solid rocket fuel out of chlorine granules (for swimming pools), charcoal briqquets (this was before I really knew better), and S. The mix was made in a 75:15:10 by volume. The mix was stored in a gallon-sized ziplock bag for a week. I had no idea as to what would happen, but storage is always the first test that attempt.

The bag was stored in an empty steel tool box along with a cup of smokeless powder (I had no idea that spontaneous ignition could be a factor). When I came back a week later and checked the box, the first sign of something being wrong was black schorch marks running out of every little opening in the tool box along with a few outward dents. When I opened the box up I saw that the smokeless powder had been burnt up and the plastic cup that it was in had melted into a little plastic blob. There was a grey slime all over the bottom of the box that came from the decomposition of the 'rocket mix'.

Zambosan
May 13th, 2002, 01:48 PM
Damn, so many sugar/oxidizer accidents...

<small>[ July 18, 2002, 01:17 AM: Message edited by: Zambosan ]</small>

inferno
May 14th, 2002, 05:09 AM
Whoa, that is a lot of accidents...For KNO3+Sugar smoke bombs, you dont have to melt it really. Also, anyone who tries to melt it to the melting points of sucrose or pot nitrate is bloody stupid, or doesnt enjoy the tiles/wallpaper in their kitchen.

Hell, it works FINE without any heating, just add a tiny bit of water (even a drop for every 30 mls or so) and stir it in together.

Ive tried cooking to various stages, ALWAYS with water though, and just wet-mixed, they work just the same, except the cooked stuff burns a fair bit quicker. I put a fair bit of water in one and cooked it a lot, probably close to ignition, and with so much water it became a very thick (thicker than honey), dough-yellow colour. It was about 200mls, and when ignited the whole lot Was burnt in 2-3 seconds, 100mls will take 15-30 seconds if confined to burn, when its not cooked.

So basically, its quicker and easy, and just as good to wahck the ingredients together with enough water to get the whole mixture reasonably damp (If its soaked, dont worry itll still burn, but its best to just be damp, a drop per 30mls or so) and light it with anything

S. Toppholzer
May 14th, 2002, 05:27 AM
well, inferno that's exactly what I did - or tried to.
It worked out before a couple of times and then it burned me, sort of.
So please take care it won't happen to you.

Anthony
May 14th, 2002, 10:09 AM
"the cooked stuff burns a fair bit quicker"

That's exactly what people are after - most of this stuff is being used for rocket propellant.

S. Toppholzer
May 16th, 2002, 02:46 PM
the whole thing reminds me of another minor accident. I don't know what I thought I'd get from it - maybe some sort of fast burning smoke composition?
Anyways, I soaked many paper towels in NaClO3 and after dhey wer dry I rolled them tightly and enclosed the whole thing with loads of broad tape - only one side remained open and a short piece of NaClO3-paper was the "fuse".
Outside I held the "torch" in my left hand and lit the "fuse" with a cigarette butt. The reaction was so fast I hadn't any time to react!
My right hand was somewhat burned and the "torch" which actually bacame a rocket landed some 50 metres away...

chem
June 14th, 2002, 06:34 PM
I'm affraid my kitchen accident beats all of yours. I was drying out a mix of KCL04, charcoal and sulpher in a pan on my cooker. I left the room to get some thing, came back and there was a big flash I fell back and it cost some thing like £220 to repair the damage.

kingspaz
June 14th, 2002, 06:52 PM
well, i'm not being mean when i say this but you deserved that! you can't expect to dry an allready sensitive mix in a fucking pan and expect it to not go off! next time put it in the oven at 40*C...

chem
June 15th, 2002, 01:04 PM
O.K it was my fault but I was young and didn't know any better.

Is it safe to dry compositions in your oven?, I can just see that resulting in a nice explosion. Most probably killing you and anyone around.

Anthony
June 15th, 2002, 01:13 PM
Best to use the sun for mixed comps, or above/below a radiator.

chem
June 15th, 2002, 05:48 PM
The problem here in not so sunny England is just that. It always seems to be wet, rainny and genarally misirable. This also seems to mess up my pyro life quite a bit. Is my airing cupboard, boiler room what ever you want to call it, a safe place to dry out comps? I mean would it be safe to dry things out in it overnight?

VX
June 15th, 2002, 07:28 PM
I doubt Anthony will sympathise with that, he, me and quite a few others here are from the UK too. :)

But yes an airing cupbord will be fine, as will a radiator etc.

zaibatsu
June 15th, 2002, 08:45 PM
When converting NaClO3 to KClO3, I have dried the wet KClO3 under a lamp, in 24hours it was very dry and perfect to use, and I'm in England too.

kanbayat
June 30th, 2002, 09:11 PM
sugar/clorate(patent under augendre's white powder ) was used alot in the 19th century to blast hard rock. with the addition of ferrocyanide of potassium..latrr with al..mixed with alchol and alowed to evaporate. it burns relativly slow if mixed in equal quantities(by weight) as the patent explain..under pressure it is quite a powerful blasting agent
.