Rougemillenial
Well-known member
- Joined
- Dec 15, 2016
- Messages
- 87
Moderator's note: The exchange that follows was split from the original, very useful, thread in the Safety section. FrugalRefiner
Ah silver fulminate, Worked with it before, will never do it again. That stuff is god awful. Honestly this rule extends to all transition metal nitrate's. In general strong oxidizers in contact with organic material is a disaster just waiting to happen. I've worked with all sorts of pyrotechnics. Everything from HMTD to gun powder, thermite, flash powder, highly nitrated organics i.e. trinitroglycerin, acetone peroxide, gasoline vapor in a pure oxygen environment, 100 liters of hydroxyl gas pressurized into a 1 gallon bottle, and anhydrous hydrazine. I can essentially guarantee nitrate/solvent mixtures will detonate in a confined environment. Chemicals should be only stored with other compatible chemicals. I've made this mistake before and it caused a massive chlorine leak . It was a really good thing I can only sleep while breathing through my nose because otherwise the situation could have been way worse if not a fatal mistake :shock: . I work in the shed now since the incident. Which brings me to another point. Absolutely positively do not ever work in a space attached to the house :shock: ! That's the easiest way to end up getting hurt or killed. If something goes awry when you're asleep, you won't know until it's too late :!: Even though it was rather practical in my situation as the risk associated with potentially attracting unwanted attention is a way bigger risk than the safety benefit of setting up a space in the middle of the yard. It's a very complex risk/reward scenario as I live in a rather populated area in New Jersey where it's very risky to do this. Legally, anything goes when it comes to amateur chemistry thus why many of my posts mention more OTC processes in case anyone else is in the same predicament or can't/wants to avoid/ buying stuff online due to the potential of purchase/IP Address tracing thus why I use darknet servers frequently. Also another safety tip I can provide, if there's a reaction pathway that is safer, even if it's a bit more expensive, go with it. Better to spend a few more dollars at the hardware store than a few thousand to stitch up shrapnel induced lacerations and drain your lungs of acid burned tissue :shock: . Another thing I learned the hard way, never jump into a process without thoroughly understanding what you're doing and have half-decent apparatus. It seems like common sense but unfortunately with intelligence comes impulsiveness and a know it all complex which can make you think you know what your doing when in reality you don't have a clue. This of course lengthens a process that should've taken less than a year to taking 5 years and counting between school, family life, and other things :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: . At least I have recovered over a pound of gold and 4 kilograms of silver and am still alive despite everything possible going wrong in the worst way possible :lol:. For example, I tried to incinerate a bunch of circuit boards in a paint can with a pinhole in the top which previously worked amazingly well, though probably a little too well the resulting syngas burned so hot that it melted the Iron wood stove and made a deafening rocket sound as the gases were traveling well above 10 times the speed of sound and made a blindingly bright fire column likely above 6000F due to the aforementioned cast iron stove melting within the same timespan as thermite would :shock: This time though I tried using a charcoal fire with no extra forced oxygen support. This failed horrifically bad as I suspect ethylene oxide was being generated instead of syngas which is extraordinarily dangerous and instantly made a massive explosion when a spark came near of course the reason it didn't outright kill me was due to a rather lucky outcome of the paint can lid being shot up at supersonic speeds and the bottom turning into a bowl instead of the side walls rupturing/shattering which would've shot metal shards at the speed of a Barret 50 cal bullet in all directions. Also I never saw that paint can lid as it likely escaped the troposphere and got picked up by the jet stream, worst case scenario, it managed to reach escape velocity thus escaping the earth which considering the mixture of gases involved and the volume of the gas and the effect it would've most likely had on the paint can lid, that would not surprise me. the escape velocity is 10,000m/s and there are a few explosives that have a detonation velocity close to or beyond that. Not to mention the volume difference was absurd. With the storytime finished, what I'm trying to say is reaction conditions affect results. in the case of destructive pyrolysis, it's absolutely critical to have the temperature above the melting point of aluminum (700C) to split the epoxide rings wide open and push the reaction to a considerable degree. Another point I'd like to bring up is waste. If a process that has a higher overhead cost generates little waste you're far better off with that process as it's a huge pain to dispose of toxic waste especially if you're doing metric tons of material like me. I've probably generated over 400 gallons of aqueous waste alone which needed to be disposed of. Many would use lye or baking soda but unfortunately I'd need an equally absurd amount of base to neutralize the amount of waste I have. Instead I added a massive amount of aluminum to replace the other metals in solution which I ended up needing over 300lbs worth. I'll be the first to admit that I absolutely should have used iron first to cement the copper and other things first because the other salts reacted so violently that it caused the mixture to dangerously superheat likely above 400F because it ignited the hydrogen spontaneously causing over 200 gallons of water to boil in one second causing an insanely dangerous explosion. Think several sticks of dynamite in a bathtub :shock: . No seriously that's the kind of explosion force I'm talking about. It was so powerful it tore apart some fencing made of solid metal and shattered my remaining Pyrex . Yes my neighbors are absolute saints for being able to put up with me :lol: . Though looking back I absolutely shouldn't have used aluminum in the first place as that was bound to produce heat way faster than the water can react to the temperature change. When you work on a large scale, it's way more dangerous.
Ah silver fulminate, Worked with it before, will never do it again. That stuff is god awful. Honestly this rule extends to all transition metal nitrate's. In general strong oxidizers in contact with organic material is a disaster just waiting to happen. I've worked with all sorts of pyrotechnics. Everything from HMTD to gun powder, thermite, flash powder, highly nitrated organics i.e. trinitroglycerin, acetone peroxide, gasoline vapor in a pure oxygen environment, 100 liters of hydroxyl gas pressurized into a 1 gallon bottle, and anhydrous hydrazine. I can essentially guarantee nitrate/solvent mixtures will detonate in a confined environment. Chemicals should be only stored with other compatible chemicals. I've made this mistake before and it caused a massive chlorine leak . It was a really good thing I can only sleep while breathing through my nose because otherwise the situation could have been way worse if not a fatal mistake :shock: . I work in the shed now since the incident. Which brings me to another point. Absolutely positively do not ever work in a space attached to the house :shock: ! That's the easiest way to end up getting hurt or killed. If something goes awry when you're asleep, you won't know until it's too late :!: Even though it was rather practical in my situation as the risk associated with potentially attracting unwanted attention is a way bigger risk than the safety benefit of setting up a space in the middle of the yard. It's a very complex risk/reward scenario as I live in a rather populated area in New Jersey where it's very risky to do this. Legally, anything goes when it comes to amateur chemistry thus why many of my posts mention more OTC processes in case anyone else is in the same predicament or can't/wants to avoid/ buying stuff online due to the potential of purchase/IP Address tracing thus why I use darknet servers frequently. Also another safety tip I can provide, if there's a reaction pathway that is safer, even if it's a bit more expensive, go with it. Better to spend a few more dollars at the hardware store than a few thousand to stitch up shrapnel induced lacerations and drain your lungs of acid burned tissue :shock: . Another thing I learned the hard way, never jump into a process without thoroughly understanding what you're doing and have half-decent apparatus. It seems like common sense but unfortunately with intelligence comes impulsiveness and a know it all complex which can make you think you know what your doing when in reality you don't have a clue. This of course lengthens a process that should've taken less than a year to taking 5 years and counting between school, family life, and other things :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock: . At least I have recovered over a pound of gold and 4 kilograms of silver and am still alive despite everything possible going wrong in the worst way possible :lol:. For example, I tried to incinerate a bunch of circuit boards in a paint can with a pinhole in the top which previously worked amazingly well, though probably a little too well the resulting syngas burned so hot that it melted the Iron wood stove and made a deafening rocket sound as the gases were traveling well above 10 times the speed of sound and made a blindingly bright fire column likely above 6000F due to the aforementioned cast iron stove melting within the same timespan as thermite would :shock: This time though I tried using a charcoal fire with no extra forced oxygen support. This failed horrifically bad as I suspect ethylene oxide was being generated instead of syngas which is extraordinarily dangerous and instantly made a massive explosion when a spark came near of course the reason it didn't outright kill me was due to a rather lucky outcome of the paint can lid being shot up at supersonic speeds and the bottom turning into a bowl instead of the side walls rupturing/shattering which would've shot metal shards at the speed of a Barret 50 cal bullet in all directions. Also I never saw that paint can lid as it likely escaped the troposphere and got picked up by the jet stream, worst case scenario, it managed to reach escape velocity thus escaping the earth which considering the mixture of gases involved and the volume of the gas and the effect it would've most likely had on the paint can lid, that would not surprise me. the escape velocity is 10,000m/s and there are a few explosives that have a detonation velocity close to or beyond that. Not to mention the volume difference was absurd. With the storytime finished, what I'm trying to say is reaction conditions affect results. in the case of destructive pyrolysis, it's absolutely critical to have the temperature above the melting point of aluminum (700C) to split the epoxide rings wide open and push the reaction to a considerable degree. Another point I'd like to bring up is waste. If a process that has a higher overhead cost generates little waste you're far better off with that process as it's a huge pain to dispose of toxic waste especially if you're doing metric tons of material like me. I've probably generated over 400 gallons of aqueous waste alone which needed to be disposed of. Many would use lye or baking soda but unfortunately I'd need an equally absurd amount of base to neutralize the amount of waste I have. Instead I added a massive amount of aluminum to replace the other metals in solution which I ended up needing over 300lbs worth. I'll be the first to admit that I absolutely should have used iron first to cement the copper and other things first because the other salts reacted so violently that it caused the mixture to dangerously superheat likely above 400F because it ignited the hydrogen spontaneously causing over 200 gallons of water to boil in one second causing an insanely dangerous explosion. Think several sticks of dynamite in a bathtub :shock: . No seriously that's the kind of explosion force I'm talking about. It was so powerful it tore apart some fencing made of solid metal and shattered my remaining Pyrex . Yes my neighbors are absolute saints for being able to put up with me :lol: . Though looking back I absolutely shouldn't have used aluminum in the first place as that was bound to produce heat way faster than the water can react to the temperature change. When you work on a large scale, it's way more dangerous.