DrManhattan - 18-6-2016 at 02:00
Could calcium nitrate be used in the same way that ammonium nitrate is used in anfo? Albeit with a large booster charge.
I am hoping to test a charge of 3kg consisting of: 5% aluminium powder (400 mesh), 6% kerosene, and 89% calcium nitrate. Boosted by 500 grams of a
KClO3 cheddite composition. If this does not succeed i will replace the kerosene with nitromethane and up the percentage.
Is calcium nitrate capable of detonating? Or am i wasting time and material by doing this?
ecos - 18-6-2016 at 02:45
3 kg is too much.
what do you plan to do ?
DrManhattan - 18-6-2016 at 02:47
The reason i planned on using so much was because if it did go high order then id definitely know that it wasnt just the booster going off. I also
plan on blasting some very large stumps while doing this experiment.
Marvin - 18-6-2016 at 02:59
The last newb post I recall where someone was talking about kilogram quantities ended with him being in the news a few days later. You make a bit
more sense than he did but your grasp of chemistry seems poor and you seem to be throwing together mixtures with little understanding of interactions.
Calcium nitrate does not detonate in the ammonium nitrate sense, the latter has oxidising and reducing groups in the same 'molecule', almost a
prerequisite for detonation.
You may get a successful blast, black powder can be used for blasting, but I'd expect the det wave to die out as it passes through the mixture.
Bert - 19-6-2016 at 05:36
There are industrial explosives that use Calcium nitrate, some water gel formulations come to mind .
Employ some Google fu, and the answer can be yours.
DrManhattan - 20-6-2016 at 01:53
Okay i do admit my lack of science knowledge is appalling. I was only hoping to find an easily produced energetic composition with very easy OTC
chemicals.
As to the industrial water gel formulations, yes i have read a few patents about them. That is what got me interested in using Ca(NO3)2 as the base
material. Problem is that most of the patents also contain large amounts of Ammonium nitrate, which is very hard to get where i am from. Not unless i
synthesize it, but who wants to waste a precious chemical like nitric acid on something as simple as ammonium nitrate.
hissingnoise - 20-6-2016 at 03:07
You could mix stoichiometric sol.s of ammonium sulphate and calcium nitrate to precipitate gypsum (CaSO4) and leave a sol. of
NH4NO3.
PHILOU Zrealone - 20-6-2016 at 03:56
Maybe Ca(NO3)2 may be used like Ba(NO3)2 with TNT (baratols) or DNT, but then the detonating stuf is TNT and the nitrate salt helps getting more
oxygen to improve the negative OB of the polynitroaromatic --> "calcitols" ?