6 replies to this topic

[CCH Concepts]

Hello All

I was reading something the other day about the chemistry behind fulminates.

this raised a concern for me.

from my understanding a metal fulminate is sythisised by dissolving a metal in nitric acid and then mixing the metal nitrate with ethanol and the crystals filtered off would be a metal fulminate. these fulminates cant be very nasty stuff.

my concern came when i was thinking about construction of some stars. if the star has a metal nitrate in it and ethanol was used as a solvent in the binding. could a metal fulminate be produced?

if so this would make a relatively harmless star quite dangerous would it not?

[pyrotrev]

FRom my understanding of the reaction, the mixture would have to be quite acidic (excess of HNO3) for fulminates to form, if your star comp. was like this I think you might have other problems!!!

[CCH Concepts]

arr that makes sense, so mixing a nitrate and the ethanol doesnt have the same reaction. its the presents of both the nitric acid and the ethanol that produces the fulminate. that explains why I had never heard of this being an issue in any posts before.

[whoof]

As trev ssays , nitric is required, ones to worry about are silver and mercury and i hope no one is using that in stars.
Potassium fulminate is relativley insensitive.
The old style mirror makers had the odd accident with their waste pots though.

[Mumbles]

Copper is really the one I'd be worried about with any vague relevance to pyro. Silver and lead are quite stable by comparison.

[CCH Concepts]

so for a reality point of view. what would make a star acidic?

poor pot nitrate for instance? or maybe a damp star?

is there the possibility of a star with say copper carbonate and pot nitrate. being bound with ethanol, ending up getting wet, becoming acidic still in the presents of ethanol?

and if this perfect storm did happen, is it even a problem, I have no idea of the quantities needed of say copper fulminate before it would be a concern.

i imagine this perfect storm would only ever produce trace amounts. would it be that a safe star becomes impact sensitive or could it be that a safe star can have some explosive power being fulminates are primary HE?

[whoof]

Copper is really the one I'd be worried about with any vague relevance to pyro. Silver and lead are quite stable by comparison.

I stand to be corrected but i do not think copper fulminate exists due to its electron shell structure (too unstable ?).

Fulminating copper is i think cuprous acetylide which requires different chemistry.

Looking around i get the impression that fulminates are fairly difficult to make , needing concentrated acid and anyhydrous alcohol (which is difficult to make in the first place).,
So my thinking is that to accidentally make it when making stars would be somewhat difficult.

The fulminating silver that used to be a problem for mirror manufacture was silver nitride which needs different (alkali) chemistry.
Wiki on tollens reagent for more info.

Edited by whoof, 11 November 2011 - 05:14 PM.