MrFormula - 10-6-2024 at 07:49
I am trying to make some pull string igniters but I don't have any potassium chlorate. I found a formula by Inventionincarnate on YouTube that is
based on the H48 primer. The ignition compound uses 56.4% potassium chlorate, 24.6% antimony trisulfide, 9% sulfur, 0.8% magnesium carbonate, and
10.2% ground glass and the striker uses 33% sulfur, 33% red phosphorus, and 33% ground glass. I was wondering if it would be possible to substitute
potassium nitrate for the p chlorate. I would have to recalculate the percentage because of the one less oxygen but that's not a problem. Any insight
would be much appreciated as I cannot find anything on the reaction between phosphorus and p chlorate other than the red phosphorus gets converted to
white and burns the chlorate because of the friction from the glass but I am not completely certain if this is true.
[Edited on 6-10-24 by MrFormula]
Yorty2040 - 10-6-2024 at 09:54
Potassium chlorate and potassium nitrate have the same number of oxygen atoms per mole. I think you might be thinking of the mass percentage; KNO3
actually has more oxygen by weight. However, it is less sensitive than chlorate, and doesn't have a hypergolic reaction with phosphorus the way
chlorates do.
If everything is ground very fine, and kept dry, ground glass might be able to provide enough friction to ignite it, but it would require more force
than chlorate. If you're having trouble, you might want to make a spring-loaded striker rather than a pull string one.
The magnesium carbonate is less necessary with nitrates, since there's no chance of forming chloric acid, so you could drop that down to 0.4% and use
the remaining 0.4% for iron oxide, which might increase performance.
[Edited on 10-6-2024 by Yorty2040]
MrFormula - 10-6-2024 at 10:54
Thank you. I don't know why it was so hard to find information on the reaction between chlorate and phosphorus. As for the chlorate and nitrate I
mixed up the number of oxygen's in chlorite and chlorate.
Laboratory of Liptakov - 11-6-2024 at 02:30
If you will use KNO3 instead KClO3, you get ready for a long string of failures. On the field of friction mixtures. Only my opinion, not more....
Fulmen - 11-6-2024 at 04:34
Nitrates are almost certain to fail in this application, there is a reason why they still use chlorates/sulfur for matches.
Laboratory of Liptakov - 11-6-2024 at 05:26
With except one nitrate, thus.........Pb(NO3)2 + Pb(H2PO2)2 which is series of interntional designations EPH xy....For example EPH 20 or EPH 26 for
loading primer caps.....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G94NwkUmGsQ&t=755s