Sciencemadness Discussion Board

NFPA change for certain chemicals ??

KonkreteRocketry - 5-5-2013 at 08:17

Umm i bought 1.5 kg of lithium perchlorate because its good and its low reactivity, zero, 0. when i checked 2 month ago, I am SO SURE it was 0, so sure.

now i just checked it has a reactivity of 3...

wth ? lifes not fair.

Mixell - 5-5-2013 at 08:34

Thats a quite interesting chemical, mostly because it dissolves in organic solvents.
May I ask where did you manage to get it?

KonkreteRocketry - 5-5-2013 at 08:42

Quote: Originally posted by Mixell  
Thats a quite interesting chemical, mostly because it dissolves in organic solvents.
May I ask where did you manage to get it?


its still being shipped, its really expensive, i got mine my china.

China and Chili have most lithium salts on earth, i suggest you find a Chili pyrotechnic supplier, I always find Chili alkili salts extremely cheap.

I was gana buy it from a chili factory of 10 kg straight, but then my mother's company had a ship that was coming to the place i live, and coincidently that shop where i bought my Lithium perchlorate online is located in the same city they were about to sail, so i just told them and they just putted on my mother's ship so the shipping feas was free :D

and why does the reactivity went from few month ago of 0, to 3 straight !!! this is really disapointing, as i expected it to be extremely safe, will it blow up in my face ?? x_x

Mixell - 5-5-2013 at 08:52

Lucky you =)

I would be happy to purchase some from you, if you won't end up using the whole 1.5kg.
Although shipping to Israel from Dubai will definitely posea problem...

KonkreteRocketry - 5-5-2013 at 09:17

Quote: Originally posted by Mixell  
Lucky you =)

I would be happy to purchase some from you, if you won't end up using the whole 1.5kg.
Although shipping to Israel from Dubai will definitely posea problem...


hahaha yup, sorry i really need those 1.5 kg, all my experiment in this summer is about it, i might even purchase more then.

It is kind of expensive though, i got it for 245 dollars / 1.5 kg.

Hexavalent - 5-5-2013 at 09:39

Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry  

and why does the reactivity went from few month ago of 0, to 3 straight !!! this is really disapointing, as i expected it to be extremely safe, will it blow up in my face ?? x_x


Where did you find the NFPA rating "a few month ago"? Many sources of these are unreliable, and it is usually advisable to check a few before coming to any definite conclusions. Furthermore, if you are so oblivious to the chemistries of such reagents "i expected it to be extremely safe, will it blow up in my face" and have to ask moronic, immature questions like these, you shouldn't be handling such reagents as lithium perchlorate. You, sir, are what we term a "k3wl".

KonkreteRocketry - 5-5-2013 at 09:56

Quote: Originally posted by Hexavalent  
Quote: Originally posted by KonkreteRocketry  

and why does the reactivity went from few month ago of 0, to 3 straight !!! this is really disapointing, as i expected it to be extremely safe, will it blow up in my face ?? x_x


Where did you find the NFPA rating "a few month ago"? Many sources of these are unreliable, and it is usually advisable to check a few before coming to any definite conclusions. Furthermore, if you are so oblivious to the chemistries of such reagents "i expected it to be extremely safe, will it blow up in my face" and have to ask moronic, immature questions like these, you shouldn't be handling such reagents as lithium perchlorate. You, sir, are what we term a "k3wl".


hey Im not trying to be cool sorry if it looks like, its just surprising thought it went from 0 to 3, and of course the first things ill do with it is about heating/ hammering/ rubbing around 1 gram to see the sensitivity and stuff, because i do think 3 is bit ''over rated' for lithium perchlorate.

Lithium perchlorate does not do anything, other than give off oxygen and lithium chloride, which support combustion, when being heated to around 500 degree, thats it.. um.. under normal conditions, it abosrbs a lot of water at very fast speed, that it wont even be able to support combustion any more.

where as NH4ClO4 gives off Cl, NO, O2, H2O, N2, some of which are toxic so i dont get why it has such an high sensitivity scale..

KonkreteRocketry - 5-5-2013 at 10:03

Oh see what i have found

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9924516

ZERO reactivity here again, im really confused. shall i trust wikipedia's MSDS or this ? any ways ill mix it 1 gram with aluminum and hammer or grind it with a metal bar to see its real reactivity. when the shipping arrives.

garage chemist - 5-5-2013 at 10:08

You should be safe as long as you don't bring it to the cinema in your pocket.

S.C. Wack - 5-5-2013 at 10:11

Obvious oxidizer is obvious. FWIW, I search Sigma-Aldrich for things like this. Apparently, sciencelab is not to be trusted for much.

woelen - 5-5-2013 at 10:46

Perchlorate salts are remarkably inert at room temperature. They are strong oxidizers, but only at elevated temperatures. In other than pyrochemistry, this salt only may be interesting because of its lithium content and because it dissolves in some organic solvents quite well. This, however, only is interesting if it is the anhydrous salt and not the tri-hydrate.

I myself have NaClO4 and this chemical is even more inert than Na2SO4 in aqueous solution.

LiClO4 can become dangerous when it is used in certain pyrotechnic mixes and when it is mixed with conc. sulphuric acid or acid, combined with P4O10. This danger is not specific though for LiClO4, this danger is true for any perchlorate.

BromicAcid - 5-5-2013 at 10:50

Here is how I understand it. The NFPA is not a government organization. Just as CAS is not a government organization. They are in the business of regulating their field and making money. As far as I know there is no free place to look up a list of the official fire diamond codes for anything. You are supposed to go out and buy the NFPA 400 Hazardous Materials Code book when it is published on a yearly basis to stay up to date.

Because people have to pay for these numbers they like to make them up. Unless you get them straight from the horse's mouth then they may not be legitimate. The appendix of the 2010 edition however which is available on-line singles out lithium perchlorate as a class 2 for reactivity.

www.nfpa.org/assets/files/pdf/research/appendix_1.pdf

These numbers are not made up arbitrarily, flash point, oxygen content, decomp temps, and anything else they can find goes into making these numbers applicable based on their standards. So you cannot really say a rating is 'over rated' because they actually put some thought and effort into determining the hazard level of this material. That is what they are paid to do.

The rating of 2 for oxidizer is backed up by the Sigma Aldrich website:

http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/catalog/product/sial/205281

Just look at the MSDS where it is rated as:

NFPA Rating
Health hazard: 2
Fire: 0
Reactivity Hazard: 2
Special hazard.: OX

So, Wiki is wrong on this and the site you were looking at is wrong on this. But you are supposed to buy the NFPA book yearly to keep updated. And the codes can and do change based on new information coming to light so it's not impossible that these were once correct at one time. It's even possible that it has gone from a 2 to a 3 as wiki says since the addendum was published in 2010 and that the sigma aldrich website just hasn't updated.

I just went though some of this in a different thread on Grignard reagents, someone found a melting point of -177C for ethylmagnesium bromide listed on a page. Problem was that -177C is the freezing point for ether, not by coincidence but that even though ether was not listed on the page, the data was culled from a site that was actually listing the solution in ether, not the free compound so all the data was wrong.

So find your data from the most reputable source possible. The internet can be very inaccurate on mass data such as this.


Check out the NFPA 2012 book to see the work that goes into determining the level of hazard:

http://www.slideshare.net/luijar38/nfpa-704-2012

Endimion17 - 5-5-2013 at 11:44

People, stop fucking relying on fucking stupid MSDS sheets. For fuck sake. They were never a reliable source of fucking anything. Use your brain and chemistry books.
Lithium perchlorate can NOT have zero reactivity label. It's a fucking perchlorate. You can make an anvil fly using perchlorates.

Finnnicus - 5-5-2013 at 17:07

Quote: Originally posted by garage chemist  
You should be safe as long as you don't bring it to the cinema in your pocket.


ScienceSquirrel - 5-5-2013 at 17:42

The perchlorate anion is very unreactive as an oxidising agent in aqueous solution but it is very reactive as part of a solid salt.
Potassium perchlorate in solution is pretty inert but solid potassium perchlorate mixed with sulphur is a different matter.