The WiZard is In - 10-4-2010 at 06:31
It happened at their [General Chemical] Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while
they were preparing to ship a out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder of CTF.
The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into
it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering
the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped on ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the
floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three-foot hole
in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in
sight, and, in general, made on hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to
evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before
things quieted down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty -
the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five
hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed
when he was stopped by a heart attack.
Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants
John D Clark
Rutgers University Press 1972
bbartlog - 10-4-2010 at 20:19
Sounds like a case where knowing what you're dealing with helps... I'm sure everyone in the room just ran like hell as soon as they saw the rupture.
Does anyone still make the stuff? I know the Germans made some in WWII but I can't think of any practical uses today that wouldn't be better addressed
with something less fiendish. Other than pure experimentation, of course :-)
a_bab - 10-4-2010 at 23:11
Chlorine trifluoride has been discussed before. Same thing with very hot flames. The rest of the threads although they are interesting and related to
energetics (the old stories with anarchists and fulminates) they don't belong here either, since there's nothing practical in them, nor do they
discuss a certain chemical. They better belong to whimsy I'd say.
" Professor, we are quite willing to take your word about the explosive. I think I
speak for all my comrades here. We have no doubt at all about your learning, and
would much prefer to hear from your own lips what you have to say on the subject,
and not have you waste any more valuable time with [non related threads]. I have not
consulted with my comrades before speaking, but I think I voice the sense of the
meeting."
Please refrain from posting and cluttering this otherwise nice forum.
Anders Hoveland - 15-6-2010 at 18:25
Chlorine pentafluoride is even more powerful. There is also the SbF6- salt containing the ClF6+ cation, invented by Karl Christe, who replied back to
an email I sent him. ClF6+ oxidizes F- , making ClF5 and F2
JohnWW - 16-6-2010 at 01:29
ClF6+, as the hexafluoroantimonate salt, can be made only either by heating ClF5, F2, and SbF5 together under high pressure, or by the reaction of
ClF5 with [KrF][SbF6], which is the only known compound of Kr stable at room temperature. In the latter case, the cation decomposes to Kr and F+, the
latter oxidizing the ClF5.