3 replies to this topic

[drtoivowillmann]

Dear Pyro-Friends:

Unfortunately fireworks, our love and passion, have a lot of enemies.
Some of them argue because of danger, others because of environmental pollution.

Let's do a counterattack and talk about environmental protection.

In the case of our Barium will be quite hard to do anything. Nobody
wants fireworks without green. Boron is equally poisonous, Thallium
is clearly worse. But maybe, here we worry without any necessity: the
so-called Acid Rain charges the athmosphere with Sulfuric Trioxide,
which readily becomes Sulfuric Acid. Our realatively small environ-
mental pollution with Barium salts will be neutralized as non-toxic
Barium Sulphate (because of being unsoluble in our and other
metabolisms).

But there are other chemicals, we clearly can substitute by less poisonous ones.
ANY QUALIFIED POST FROM YOU TO THIS THEME WILL BE WELCOME.

1st.) Name the actual BAD chemical !
2nd.) What is it for ?
3rd.) Less harmfull or even harmless substitutes ?
4th.) Does the substitute work as well as the BAD traditional stuff or is there some
slight loss of quality in your compositions ?

I'll try to begin, in order to give some examples:

1st.) Lead Oxides
2nd.) "Crackling"
3rd.) Black Copper Oxide (CuO); Bismuth-Oxi-Nitrate = BiONO3*H2O (there is much
more oxigen in it than in the simple Bismuth-Oxide)
4th.) CuO: there are some realy good cracklings with it, but it remains audibly inferior
to that made with Lead Oxides.
BiONO3*H2O: practically as loud as made with Lead Oxides, but it's horribly
expensive.
SOLUTION: quite large amounts of CuO combined with small amounts of
BiONO3*H2O = excellent loudness, price still achievable.

Onyone with better ideas ? Pease, post right here ! Please, nothing about pistol caps !
The trick is old and not so satisfactory.
Anyone tried Iridium Oxide or Potassium Perrhenate (here in Brazil, there is none), at least in small proportions of total, as both are also quite expensive ? Anything else ?

2nd. example:

1st.) Antimony or Antimony Sulphides
2nd.) Glitter, slow Golden Streamer (= willow tree without chlorate), some old
formulas; it’s a combustion calalyst.
3rd.) Very fine powdered metallic iron; Black Copper Oxide (CuO).
4th.) Very fine iron: in small amounts (2% -3% of total) give excellent glitters;
don't substitute with Iron Oxides or your damp stars will heat up.
CuO: really excellent willows; may be substituted by Copper Carbonate,
for it's better to mix in. In the ignited star heat transforms the carbonate
into oxide. Don't try metallic copper ! Copper metal and sulphur combined
may ignite spontaneously.

Anyone with better ideas ?

If you, dear Pyro-Friend,know some similar environmental problem and know its
solution, it's up to you to post it here right now. Thanks !

Greetings from Brazil:
Toivo

[MDH]

Is there not currently an investigation into the development of nitrogen rich compounds? From what I remember reading they are finding ways to make their manufacture less expensive. The primary reason for their development is because of places such as Disneyland which have fireworks displays every night and can cause local environmental damage over time.

[pyrotrev]

Yes, one or two people are looking at using oxidisers such as nitroformates instead of chlorates/perchlorates; there's a bit of an issue in the USA with perchlorate ions in the environment, never mind the 19 tons of HCL liberated everytime the Space Shuttle takes off. Getting a really good flame colour (particularly for green) will likely still be a problem I guess without chlorine in the flame.

[phildunford]

There was some research published in Pyrotechnica manay years ago on safer 'greens'.

I'll look it up when I get home