Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Silver fulminate

tom haggen - 16-6-2004 at 21:51

Does anyone know how to extract silver fulminate from those toy fireworks that are a little wad of paper filled with silver fulminate. You throw them on the ground and they go pop.

Esplosivo - 16-6-2004 at 22:23

If I recall correctly fulminates are soluble in ammonia so... But be careful!! Damned fulminates scare the hell out of me. I've heard that dry silver fulminate can be caused to deflagrate by a drop of water falling on it. True or not take your precautions.

tom haggen - 17-6-2004 at 06:16

I'll be working with small amounts.

tom haggen - 17-6-2004 at 21:30

Quote:

Ok you got me on the words! Ok you got me on the words!
I was refering on electropositivity as opposed to electronegativity!
Electronegativity of Hg, Ag, Cu is 1,9 and thus electropositivity is 2,1!

You spoke about electric potential and there it is true that Ag(+) is a stronger oxydiser than Cu(2+) and Cu(+) and Hg(2+) a little more than Ag(+)!
Thus Cu will displace Ag(+) and Hg(2+) salts and Ag will displace Hg(2+); but if the effect is strong with highly soluble nitrate salts it will be another story for the very unsoluble Hg and Ag fulminates- read very slow and uncomplete --> USELESS!
The use of Zn, Al, Mg, Ca, Na will help a lot because potential difference is bigger what gives some drive force to the reaction and with a proper choice, you will get a soluble fulminate salt that will allow nearly all metathesis one could think off!



Well I did a search on google, and this was about the best information I could come up with. This quote was pulled from the copper fulminate thread. It talks about how mercury and silver fulminate are very insoluble. I'm wondering if this means in general, or if it's just specific to what that thread was talking about. To be honest much of that thread was over my head. You might be asking yourself why not just make your own silver fulminate? Well silver is expensive, and those "Snap" toy fireworks are cheap. Anyway, I just want to make some small electric match devices. Oh by the way explosivo, Silver Chloride is soluble in ammonia but i'm not sure about silver fulminate.

[Edited on 18-6-2004 by tom haggen]

JDP - 17-6-2004 at 23:22

Silver really isn't that expensive; an ounce of .999% goes for around $5-7 IIRC. Since one would only want to make .1 to .5g AgONC at a time, this investment will definitely prove it's self cost-effective.

Darkfire - 17-6-2004 at 23:45

I remeber i made a bit too much, more than i was expecting. It detonated by itself.

[Edited on 18-6-2004 by Darkfire]

Esplosivo - 18-6-2004 at 04:26

I wasn't referring to silver compounds but to fulminates in general. I am still not 100% sure that this is correct though.

Edit: Found something to proove that fulmiantes are soluble in water. Check out PowerLabs on the fulminates page. In the purification procedure it is clearly stated that the fulminate is dissolved in ammonium hydroxide. The fulminate is then precipitated by adding ethanoic acid which reacts with the ammonia and therefore the fulminate is not longer dissolved. (The ammonia should be concentrated though)

[Edited on 18-6-2004 by Esplosivo]

tom haggen - 18-6-2004 at 20:50

Well I read the page on the powerlabs and found it very informitave. It would be nice to know if silver fulminate behaves the same way as mercury fulminate when mixing with ammonium hydroxide. Well I think i'm just going to break down and synthesize my own silver fulminate, rather than trying to extract it from those cheesy firework toys. By the way, where did you read that silver fulminate reacts with water? Do you think that denaturated ethonal will work as a substitue for absolute ethonal? 95% Ethonal is hard to come by unless I try to distill my own.

[Edited on 19-6-2004 by tom haggen]

Esplosivo - 19-6-2004 at 03:24

Well I think there should have been some misunderstanding. You know I wasn't referring to any reaction with water :P With the 'falling on it' I was stating that the force of the drop applied onto the fulminate would actually cause it to detonate. As long as I know fulminates are insoluble in water.

[Edited on 19-6-2004 by Esplosivo]

tom haggen - 19-6-2004 at 06:25

Well In a few days when I can buy some toy fireworks I will try extracting some silver fulminate. However, I've read in a previous post that "Snaps" contain fulminating silver, and not silver fulminate. Although, megalomania's chem lab contradicts that and states that they contain silver fulminate. I'm willing to bet they contain the latter.

tom haggen - 8-2-2005 at 21:15

Well first of all I would just like to say that I can't believe I never posted my results on this thread. However, I was working overtime last summer and I guess its understandable. Anyway, I tried isolating the fulminate from those stupid firework toys and I think I was some what successful. I ended up with a dark pink precipitate in the bottom of a jar filled with ammonium hydroxide. But I was unable to filter it and didn't obtain any yields so it was discarded.


[Edited on 9-2-2005 by tom haggen]

[Edited on 9-2-2005 by tom haggen]

Polverone - 9-2-2005 at 02:03

This site is not for basic, practical discussion of explosives. The original question was somewhat off the beaten path; this isn't. If the thread veers toward the practical and mundane I will have to close it.

tom haggen - 9-2-2005 at 16:29

Point noted:)

Well I guess I will ask a better question then. As mentioned above I noticed that some sort of dark pink precipitate formed in the bottom of my mason jar. I'm not really quite sure if it was silver fulminate or not, and it was such a little amount that it was almost impossible to filter out any product. So it was discarded. Has anyone had first hand experience with separating silver fulminate out of these toy fire works, and notice a dark pinkish color? I'm just wondering if what I thought was silver fulminate, was silver fulminate at all?