Perchloric acid

[grance]

Has any one ever used this in PM refineing just wondering. I almost bought some once. Its a super strong oxidizer twice as strong as nitric they say. Model Rocketry is one of my other favorit hobbys and was thinking of making my own motors of ammonium perchlorate and powderd aluminum. Would have had to make the ammonium perchlorate myself but I never did it.

 

[Irons2]

I saw a fume hood destroyed while using Perchloric Acid. Dangerous stuff. Unless you're refining Ruthenium, it's not needed.

 

[Lou]

You don't even need it then.


Avoid the perchloric acid. If you find any, leave it alone and have it disposed of. The material can be very, very dangerous with organics and most transition metals.

 

[goldsilverpro]

There was a famous accident in L.A. in the 40s where a 50 gal tank of perchloric acid exploded and literally took out a city block.

http://blogdowntown.com/2009/02/4078-sixtytwo-years-ago-downtown-factory-blast

 

[Irons2]

Ammonium Perchlorate based rocket fuel plant explosion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KuGizBjDXo

 

[spentfire]

I second, third, and forth everything said above. Aside from not playing well with metals, If you get any organics (and I mean ANY) near perchloric acid, you can make some very shock sensitive explosives. When I was in graduate school, my advisor would only allow us to use drops of the stuff in our sample pretreatment.

Spentfire

edit...Oops, I stepped on Lou's toes there.

 

[grance]

Thats why I never made the fule a professor from BGSU that I talked to said "A revolver is a lot easyer way to kill your self than messing with that stuff".

 

[Lino1406]

To make things exact, this was a solution of
perchloric acid and acetic acid