bajamar
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Registered: 19-5-2005
Location: central Europe
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HMTD prolonged synthesis
I guys, for intro, I am an analytical chemist, a PhD student. Anyway, I routinely produce HMTD with the standard procedure. However, I had no time to
do the reaction for the required amount of time at once and therefore I froze the whole reaction mixture and continued with the synthesis for short
periods of time the next two days. Afterwards I filtered out HMTD, and prepared it for cleaning and drying. The appearence of the solid was not the
usual white powder but small sparkly crystals instead. I did some stability testing, as I expected stability to decrease with formation of visible
crystals. I have not found any difference but the product seemed to have produced a slightly stronger explosion. Anyone with experience in such
synthesis of HMTD? Does such discontinuous procedure have an effect on the product stability?
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a_bab
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Welcome to our board!
Well, I'd say that the interruptions during the synthesys will not only produce larger crystals, but will also create internal stress in the
structure of the crystals. Not something to mess with if you need your fingers. After all, HTMD is known to decompose spontaneously and why taking an
extra risk?
Since you are a chemist student that means you might have access to nice chems. Stick to other energetic compounds; there are plenty to "play
with", which are much safer than the organic peroxides.
[Edited on 20-5-2005 by a_bab]
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bajamar
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Posts: 5
Registered: 19-5-2005
Location: central Europe
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Thanks for your response. Actually, due to time pressure and experimenntal work in other fields, I kind of wasn't much interested in meticulous
work regarding other explosives. I have a fairly good and long experience in HMTD synthesis with one minor incident. Of course I am aware that organo
peroxides are not ideally stable compounds overall but my "relationship" with HMTD has been quite positive. I did synthetize hexagene from
hexamethylenetetraamine using 95%+ HNO3 but just making the acid that concentrated was time (and t-shirt) consuming. The product yield was not
sufficient. The truth is that I have access to more fine chemicals but I need some inspiration.
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