Boric acid

[shooter3]

(I think this is the right section for this).

An artical on the Drudge report says a truck load of Boric acid was hijacked in California. It goes on to say that the authorities ar very worried because it is a component of high explosives.

What are they talking about. Does anyone know how this stuff is used?

Is this just another bunch of crap?

[vulture]

Bullshit.
Boric acid is just poisonous, the only use I could see in explosives is to stabilize nitrate/Aluminium mixes.

[Anthony]

I concur...

Moving to Chemistry Related.

[Trinitrotoluene]

I don't really see boric acid as being that bad. It dosen't seem that toxic, and it only seem to be used for in pyrotechnics is a flame coloring agent. When I did a flame test on it, it gave off a nice green flame.

[NERV]

Most likely the pigs are just trying to scare people. You see the more people that fear chemicals the easer it is for them to ban them.

[megalomania]

You have to see this from the perspective of the media sheeple: Chemistry = bad! Some monkey probably checked a chemical databse of possible uses for the compound and as soon as his eyes saw "pyrotechnics" his brain said "bomb" and his mouth said "the sky is falling!"

You can buy this stuff in a drug store FFS! Hell, they could saw water is a bomb making component, but too many people know what water is. I am sure at one point or another just about any chemical that has been around longer than 100 years has been used in explosives in one way or another.

Them saying this is some bomb making material is just a ratings booster, shock and awe applied to the mass media. This could also be a tactic to alert people to help find these loathsum terrorists with weapons of mass destruction hijacked for the purpose of killing CHILDREN!!! Would anyone bother to help locate a stolen truck of inert chemical of little value, what this really is?

Just break down the key action words: Hijacked instead of stolen implies people have been taken hostage and the driver is being forced to drive to some unknown destination. Boric acid, uh oh, chemical buzzword, break out your duct tape and plastic sheeting. A "component of explosives" instead of common industrial substance; clearly designed to incite panic and loathing for the person when caught. The thief will be tried as a terrorist instead of a car thief.

[jfk]

ok this might be a bit off topic, but its about borates, sodium borate, for stain removal and silly putty, ive got a whole lot of it, but i was wondering does it have any use in explosive synthesis? ive searched all over and cant find anything except different brands of stain remover

[Marvin]

Sodium borate is a componant of no explosive I know, its not reducing, and its a fairly crappy oxidiser. By adding HCl you can make boric acid, which you can usually buy at a pharmacy anyway. Boric acid is used as a pH stabiliser for pyrotechnics with aluminium in. With a fair amount of effort you can make boron powder which is used in some high energy pyrotechnics, and with a lot more high molecular weight boranes can be made which are high energy rocket fuels, though largly ignored nowerdays.

Picking up a random household chemical and asking what explosives can be made from it isnt a good way to get furthur. Learn about classes of real explosives and try to work backwards chemically from what you have available, if this is the sort of chemitry you are interested in.

[jfk]

Ok, thanks for that Marvin, i really should have stated my question "is it a precursor of a precursor" but since i didnt really know I wouldnt have done that. In New Zealand you cannot buy boric acid from any shop, i had a look when I was out today, so you've helped me out quite a bit there. Because now I know where to get boric acid from.

As for precipitating boron from boric acid, im going to do some research about that. as boron metal will be quite usefull to me also.

[FadeToBlackened]

I think it would be nice to isolate boron from boric acid
Magnesium Boride + HCl -> diborane

[FadeToBlackened]

Does anyone know if B2O3 + HCl -> BCl3? If so then..

2BCl3 + 3Zn 3ZnCl2 + 2B (900 oC)

One should be able to drive the water out of boric acid with heat, treat with HCl, and pass the BCl3 through a length of pipe containing Zn powder at said 900 degrees C. The MSDS says 'Incompatible with metals', I wonder if the pipe would need replacing or if the pipe would mess something up..

[Tuatara]

Thats going to be just a little tricky, since zinc melts at 419C, and boils at 907C :D

[mt1988]

a small amount of Boric acid mixed with meyths give a cool green flame and im going to try making green fireballs

[Marvin]

Boric acid will dehydrate to boric oxide pretty easily, but you cant make the chloride that way. The standard method for technical production of boron last I looked was reduction with stoichiomentric amounts of magnesium powder, basically another thermite type, like production of silicon from sand. Some magnesium borides will be formed also, treatment with dilute acid should dissilve everything except the impure boron. Using enough magnesium should produce magnesium boride instead, but I gather lower boranes are a tad toxic, and react with water...

Adding boric acid to methanol, with a drop or two of conc sulphuric as a catalyst will produce the ester methyl borate. It renders flames green due to the boron flame colour, and being completely voltaile works a lot better than solutions of boron containing salts. If the boric acid used is made from sodium borate, the sodium ion residue will probably reck the flame colour unless the borate is distilled. Methyl borate is rather toxic. You can make ethyl borate which is much less toxic, but the reaction needs to be driven forward with a lot of conc sulphuric.

I've been wondering if the different readyness to form the borate esters could be used to remove methyl alcohol from methylated spirit, since they are very difficult to seperate by distillation alone.

[jfk]

Originally posted by FadeToBlackened
Does anyone know if B2O3 + HCl -> BCl3? If so then..

2BCl3 + 3Zn 3ZnCl2 + 2B (900 oC)

One should be able to drive the water out of boric acid with heat, treat with HCl, and pass the BCl3 through a length of pipe containing Zn powder at said 900 degrees C. The MSDS says 'Incompatible with metals', I wonder if the pipe would need replacing or if the pipe would mess something up..

Thats "2BCl3 + 3Zn -> 3ZnCl2 + 2B", right?

would it be worth trying to dehydrate boric acid with sulphuric acid?

[FadeToBlackened]

Yes, the site I copied that equation from must have had a graphic for -> and I didn't notice. It did list reduction with magnesium as one way of production. Magnesium Boride is probably like the silicide, add HCl and get borane (or silane). Silane is pyrophoric, borane probably is too. I wondered about making BCl3 like that since I seem to remember a post about BF3 made similarly (it was a post about RDX i think). I wonder if you could use something with a higher melting point than zinc, since even if it doesn't have a volatile chloride that will be released, you could just dissolve and filter the salt out (unless boron would try to react with it?). Random thoughts...blah.

The document I got that from has lots of boron-related info. I found it searching on ask.com, once I get my computer moved I'll run httpd on it also.