Id like to make a HUGE smoke cloud

Not too sure what you mean by safe. I.e - in terms of the reaction, or the smoke produced.

Though, it's probably not terribly important, as this method is not particularly nice in either sense.

As kids, we played around with the ubiquitous chlorine/brake-fluid bombs. This went on for months and months. Starting out with 50gm piles on bricks. Moving on to 100gms in plastic pop bottles, before the big finale.

Forgive me here, my recollection is somewhat hazy. On the night in question we poured around 500ml (wt unknown) of granular pool chlorine into a 900ml glass bottle. We then proceeded to pour in brake-fluid until it was level with the top of the chlorine granules. Yeah, I know - bloody stupid, but in our 'infinite wisdom' we had concluded that if the lid were to be left off the bottle, that the pressure build up would not be too great and that we could expect a 4-6ft high flame from the top of the bottle.

Well, needless to say this was not to be the case. The six of us present all witnessed a blue flash that started in the middle of the mixture and propogated radially, somewhat like a dinner plate in shape. After this, 2 simultaneous 'spikes' were observed to travel both up and downwards from this point to the top and bottom of the mixture. (all of this happened in about 1/10 of a second)

At around about this point we all realised that we were pretty much screwed, and that now would be a good time to turn around. Halfway through the act of turning around a large sound that is best descibed as a 'boof' was heard and we were all hit in the back by flying pieces of the bottle.

Wanting to avoid the smoke, we ran out the front and observed the cloud of white smoke to be covering the 5 bedroom, 2 storey house that I resided in at the time. All of the neighborhood dogs were barking, as were all of the porch lights turned on. oops! When we turned back to look at what we'd done, there was no sight of the house. From 15m away the entire house was covered by this thick white smoke.

After around 1/2 an hour the smoke (and smell) had subsided sufficiently to permit our re-entry. Apart from the window that was broken and the plants that died from having the mixture splattered all over them, everthing was fine.

Perhaps this would be better placed in the "Most ignorant thing you've done while conducting an experiment thread", however - as long as glass were not used, the activity conducted in a non-urban environment and most importantly, that the smoke were not to be used for hiding living organisms/creatures. If these precautions were followed, then and only then could this be considered safe.

Total estimated smoke output > 1000 cubic meters.

Evil_lurker, I find the idea of mixing TCCA with an organic compound as a smoke source a VERY bad one. This is asking for serious trouble and also produces really toxic smoke.

This kind of crap experiments should not be performed in any inhabited area. If enough of that kind of experiments is performed, then at some time TCCA will also be banned as an OTC chemical, due to misuse. Please do not spoonfeed the k3wls with this kind of info .

We have to be careful with the chems which still are OTC. TCCA is a very interesting oxidizer and it is one of the only few real good oxidizers which is left available for the general public as a nice OTC chemical. That should remain so!

[Edited on 17-7-06 by woelen]

try heating up ping-pong balls in a metal tin as if you were trying to Melt them

Smoke

I have discussed this once before and what happens is that all kinds of quite heavy chlorinated hydrocarbons are formed. The oil is not totally broken down, but a mist/smoke of medium size chlorinated compounds are formed, which are VERY nasty. These are known to be highly likely to be carcinogens (think of it as old chlorinated oils, used in certain electronic components, these are not allowed anymore at the moment).

For this reason I am so against the TCCA/oil mix or hypochlorite/oil mix. I have no problem with people making some fun at times (I also once was 16 ), but the chlorinated oil mist has nothing to do with fun anymore. So, I would say, if you really want a smoke bomb, try some of the other suggestions, there are quite a few at the moment already, and none of these is really nasty if you accidently happen to inhale some smoke.

Quote:

Originally posted by woelen Please do not spoonfeed the k3wls with this kind of info . [Edited on 17-7-06 by woelen]

Aw c'mon...

What's wrong with speeding up the process of natural selection?

My advice to the punk: stop reading the crapbook and go to www.roguesci.org and see what real pyrotechnics are. Then come back and post when you have some idea of what you're doing.

Failing that, please decrease the world's kewl population by one. The people at roguesci and here will be more than glad to tell you how.

Simply burn some red phosphorous, as you see me doing in this picture . Yes, this is red phosphorous burning, and I took the picture.

4P + 5O2 ---> 2P2O5

The P2O5 forms a dense cloud of phosphoric acid by taking moisture from the air.



Hodges

sure

Be sure to tell us where that convenience store is if you succeed in getting that red P.

And yes, Punk, the ACB is no good.

sparky (~_~)

If I had an RP tree and you had a feather up your ass, we'd both be tickled...

Well

Pardon?

RP is something I CERTAINLY Wouldn`t consider as a fire retardant!

YT already commented on the RP as flame retardant. Newspaper with sodium hypochlorite???? No, that is not a good recipe for smoke . Try paper soaked with a solution of KNO3, let it dry and try to light it. That should work better.