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Phantom
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[*] posted on 8-4-2012 at 12:46


Quote: Originally posted by Vikascoder  
these days i was making some chlorate gunpowder i have made about a kilogram of it . to check it power i burned 3 grams of gunpowder 2 mitres away from my one kilo of gunpowder heap . it was so powerful that the other 1kg heap also caught fire . there was a very loud bang and a small crater in the ground . luckily i was at a very safe distance and i was totally safe but my neighbours started peepin in my ground what happened . chlorate gun powder is very powerful its good to keep it at very safe place donot burn anything near it


Lol, this happened to me with a big cup of meal powder :D




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[*] posted on 9-4-2012 at 02:35


Another accident I had was with some unneutralized MHN drying on the stove. (For sensitivity testing purposes, most of my MHN batch was neutralized)
Next morning I woke up, and there was a strange smell and smoke in my living room :) It apparently exploded because of the extra heat of sunlight.




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[*] posted on 9-4-2012 at 03:27


Quote: Originally posted by Phantom  
Wait, so you are still blind on your right eye? That's some serious shit. I remember when I have grinded some natrium metal with some mercury. It exploded and almost hit my face and I did not have any gear on my face. Luckily everything was okay. By the way this was at school with the teacher :D
I wrote there that I mad a full recovery in a week!
Also, regarding your comment, I have tried it, it's very reactive with the evolution of mercury vapour and sizzing. Doing that same reaction with an increase in surface area will have landed some bad results!
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[*] posted on 9-4-2012 at 03:30


Quote: Originally posted by Vikascoder  
these days i was making some chlorate gunpowder i have made about a kilogram of it . to check it power i burned 3 grams of gunpowder 2 mitres away from my one kilo of gunpowder heap . it was so powerful that the other 1kg heap also caught fire . there was a very loud bang and a small crater in the ground . luckily i was at a very safe distance and i was totally safe but my neighbours started peepin in my ground what happened . chlorate gun powder is very powerful its good to keep it at very safe place donot burn anything near it

Thats must have been a comical encounter! What was the expressions on your neighbours faces?
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Bhaskar
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[*] posted on 9-4-2012 at 03:36


Quote: Originally posted by Goorlap  
Another accident I had was with some unneutralized MHN drying on the stove. (For sensitivity testing purposes, most of my MHN batch was neutralized)
Next morning I woke up, and there was a strange smell and smoke in my living room :) It apparently exploded because of the extra heat of sunlight.
Whats yhe full form of MHN?
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[*] posted on 11-4-2012 at 05:24


Quote: Originally posted by Bhaskar  
Quote: Originally posted by Vikascoder  
these days i was making some chlorate gunpowder i have made about a kilogram of it . to check it power i burned 3 grams of gunpowder 2 mitres away from my one kilo of gunpowder heap . it was so powerful that the other 1kg heap also caught fire . there was a very loud bang and a small crater in the ground . luckily i was at a very safe distance and i was totally safe but my neighbours started peepin in my ground what happened . chlorate gun powder is very powerful its good to keep it at very safe place donot burn anything near it

Thats must have been a comical encounter! What was the expressions on your neighbours faces?

my neighbour were looking like at me as there is yamraaj at mu home sabke yaar mu phate reh gaye. bas yaar muge ghur te rahe
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[*] posted on 11-4-2012 at 05:30


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=dec_1334124937
He wanted to be posted on YouTube, but it became more suitable for liveleak...

[Edited on 11-4-2012 by simply RED]




When logic and proportion have fallen sloppy dead...
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[*] posted on 11-4-2012 at 05:56


one more accident happened .when i was making hcl using h2so4+nacl my gas generator burst out and all the acid spilled everywhere. even 5to8 drops spilled on my face and it burned very badly .
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[*] posted on 11-4-2012 at 06:44


Quote: Originally posted by Vikascoder  
Quote: Originally posted by Bhaskar  
Quote: Originally posted by Vikascoder  
these days i was making some chlorate gunpowder i have made about a kilogram of it . to check it power i burned 3 grams of gunpowder 2 mitres away from my one kilo of gunpowder heap . it was so powerful that the other 1kg heap also caught fire . there was a very loud bang and a small crater in the ground . luckily i was at a very safe distance and i was totally safe but my neighbours started peepin in my ground what happened . chlorate gun powder is very powerful its good to keep it at very safe place donot burn anything near it

Thats must have been a comical encounter! What was the expressions on your neighbours faces?

my neighbour were looking like at me as there is yamraaj at mu home sabke yaar mu phate reh gaye. bas yaar muge ghur te rahe


Oh god! 1kg of a chlorate composition? You intend to store that? Next time you make any compositions, just make small amounts and use at once. Storing them in large quantities, especially a chlorate composition, just isn't safe. A spark and it goes boom, possibly setting fire to your house as well.

As for me, luckily, I have never had major accidents related to chemistry. A minor one (probably not even one) was me trying to blowtorch some phosphorous/KMnO4 wrapped in aluminum foil (there were as much phosphorous as you could extract off 1 match box).
That was stupid, because the next thing it did was explode, and a spark landed on the back of my hand. The place it landed felt like it was burning for a few minutes, then it was alright again.
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[*] posted on 16-4-2012 at 01:23
Accidents, well...


I guess we've all had them to some degree or another. Given that my chem "career" started when I was six; I've had a few myself ;) They've been varied both in degree and detail as my "career" has included: unsupervised, extensive "energetic explorations" back in the glorious 60's when a kid could get any chem he could pay for, a university chem degree, several years in the Army, and extensive high power rocketry work. So in chronological order:

1. For 5th grade (circa 1968) Show and Tell I asked to be allowed to fly a rocket (on a wire) across the auditorium. Luckily (in retrospect) that request was refused. But they did allow me to demo a good sized batch of Ammonium Dichromate. Which was a big hit. However the beaker it was in cracked and made a pretty gnarly scorch mark on the table top. It also resulted in my 1st prohibition! No more Show and Tells for me.

2. The next year, my years of amateur flash powder study caught up with me. I had made a sample (sodium peroxide, Magnesium powder, activated charcoal) that i wrapped in some Kleenex. I was in my friends basement waiting for him to mix up his potion. For whatever reason the sucker blew up without warning :o Luckily i was holding in by my lap so my eyes and face escaped any damage. It did give me a large 2nd degree burn on my wrist, scorched my shorts, and caught the bottom of my t-shirt on fire. My doctor, after meeting me at the Emergency Room gave me a good ass chewing which included the most colorful language that I'd ever heard him use. It also earned me my second banning. From my friend's house.

3. At college (late 70s) I did a year of Independent Study with an Organic Chem professor. One reaction had me making a waste product that was a nasty, stinky, thiol thing. A 1st yr grad student was my supervisor. I asked him how to get rid of it. Being it was the Glorious 70's; his answer was: "pour it down the drain." Roger that! Life was sooo simple then. Pretty soon we have a 1st Yr Chem TA in the lab, asking if we just did "something"? So we followed him to the basic chem labs that were on the floor below us. And which had all been evacuated! We went in one lab and noted a nasty, stinky smell. Of which we denied any knowledge, but did tell him it was OK ;) I didn't dump that down the sink after that.

4. Also while pursuing my chem degree I got a great Work Study job as part of my financial aid. I worked for three years as the prep slave in a biochem lab. My prof was a world renowned protein chemist guy who studied Cytochrome C from all sorts of creatures. My job was pretty much "processing" the creatures and extracting the Cytochrome C. And I got paid for it as well as having a huge lab space to myself! It doesn't get much better for an undergrad chem nerd! Some examples of my work? For a while one of the grad students was looking at yeast Cyto C. So I got 50lb boxes of the stuff, prepped it, and passed it on. After a while I HATED the smell of yeast and had to give up bread for a bit. Another time a town hired a guy to cut down on their pigeon problem. So one afternoon he pulls up to the building with about 400 dead pigeons in the back of his truck! We only needed the heart and breast muscle. We set up a pigeon disassembly line (a few of the newer grad students had to help) and ripped those things apart. At one point several of us had to break and go to a P Chem class. We didn't change; we just trundled over in our bloody, feathered up clothes. Oh those good old days. So you get the idea. My accident came about after Thanksgiving when someone decided to study the Cyto C in tapeworms :mad: Nasty, nasty, nasty!!! So I got seventy pounds of frozen tapeworms from a local slaughterhouse. My basic processing method was usually to through whatever I was working on into a gallon Waring blender, homogenize it, then extract the protein. If you ever saw the old SNL skit about the Bassomatic; that was pretty much it! The tapeworms had a complication. Normally I just worked with hearts, or very active muscles (more Cyto C). But the tapeworms required me to do something to kill their own proteolytic enzymes. Which basically meant that I had to dump a chemical that was a close cousin to a nerve agent into my blender. I forget exactly which I used, but it was some floro-phosphate thing. For my protection they gave me an atropine syringe :o My problem was that the postdoc who made the stuff put it in a glass bottle. When I whipped up the tapeworms it created this horrible, slippery, "meringue-like foam which also had a smell that induced instant, uncontrollable retching. I'd highly recommend against blenderizing tapeworms ;) Anyway, somewhere among my retching, refilling, emptying, etc. the blender the glass bottle shot out of my slime covered gloved hand. And broke on the concrete floor right at my feet. Sorry Michael Jackson, but I'm pretty sure right then that I invented The Moon Walk as I got the hell out of the place. I then regrouped, kitted up (respirator, bags on my feet, atropine injector in my pocket) and went back and decontaminated the floor. Of course this was the Saturday of the lab picnic so I was the only person there. But it all turned out OK. And thank goodness I never had to process tapeworms again! But think, I got paid $3.85 an hour for all this fun!! Ahhh, the Glorious 70's!!

5. My last misadventure occurred at my last Army posting. I was the project officer who tested Field Artillery Scatterable Mines (FASCAMs in Army lingo); more commonly known as Cluster bombs in the civilian world. One shell held 36 of them. Each had the same kill mechanism as a hand grenade. The grenade and the electronics were held in a pie wedge-shaped hunk of hard plastic. The kill mechanism was surrounded by a "sheath" of liquid explosive. So however the mine landed, the explosive would be under the grenade and would pop it up about head high. The thing had seven trip wires, an anti-disturbance feature, and a self-destruct feature. A nasty little thing; that's for sure. The design guys were always thinking up failure modes and would then send us the items to test. One such test involved dropping the shells, in various orientations, from about 70 feet up; onto a steel platform. We wanted to be sure rough handling wouldn't accidentally detonate the mines. After we dropped them, remotely of course; we watched them for a day or so; then hauled them away for destruction. There was a separate Demo Branch that was responsible for such things and during this test there was just the Demo guy and I at the site. So he puts a couple of sticks of C4 on the thing. Now it certainly doesn't look like enough to me, but he's the expert and it's his C4. We light the fuse and run away. After the explosion we return and see a fair amount of the shell is still there. And as I look into the desert I see a mine. With some trip wires deployed. Then another, and another. Then a whole freaking bunch! So we didn't destroy any mines; we just chucked them across the desert. At which point we executed the run away plan. I got back to the office and checked in with our story. We then got on the horn with the design guys. The problem? As a safety feature; these mines only arm after experiencing the setback force of being shot out of a howitzer. A good idea no doubt. The concensus was the mines shouldn't be armed. Though there was some doubt as the force of the C4 blowing them was certainly substantial. Was it enough?? The experts didn't think so. But they were in Minnesota and New Jersey; not at our site. And they didn't have to go back and individually blow up each of those mines. I did. So the next day my demo pal and I went out and found every mine. Real carefully. We then set a hunk of C4 next to each mine; but it couldn't touch the mine in case the anti-disturbance feature got activated; and blew each one up. A bit of a pucker day, no doubt :o For the rest of this test i made the Demo guy wrap each shell in a freaking blanket of C4. We didn't have any other problems. That was an interesting time which included a few other pucker times. And what really pissed me off? I didn't get hazardous duty pay; unlike anyone else who worked on these projects. They were all civilians so they got hazardous duty pay; as well as overtime. When I went to personnel to try and straighten this out? I was told: "Too bad, you're in artillery; only EOD officers get hazard pay." WTF? I work on a mine field, with live mines, every day. Tough. Oh well, at least I got to blow a lot of stuff up.

OK, I've rambled enough. Accidents do happen. And for the weirdest reasons. Always keep that in mind when dealing with energetics!
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[*] posted on 19-4-2012 at 03:25


Quote: Originally posted by Bhaskar  
Whats yhe full form of MHN?
do you mean the full name ? Mannitol hexanitrate



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Pyro
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 04:37


when i was testing different nitration times and ways to nitrate cellulose i had accideltally left a little water in the acid beaker, so i unwittingly poured H2SO4 and HNO3 in and added the cellulose. it started to make lots of very thick reddish orange smoke and the cotton got dissolved and the entire mixture started boiling, so i put in a beaker of water to keep it cool, then once the volume had decreased by half it turned green and made lots of foam, after the foam has gone i had about 70 ml of green mixture with black stuff in the bottom (carbon i guess), i imagine that the small amout of water diluted the H2SO4 that decomposed the cellulose into H2O and C which made a vicious circle.




all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. :D
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 05:25


Nitration runaway... Fortunately I never had one. Two years ago, I was nitrating cotton for the first time. I had little equipment: a couple of clean jars, some powdered ammonium nitrate (from prills), some drain cleaner sulfuric acid, and some baking soda. It went ok, but the nitrating mixture fumed a ton. The top of the jar was corroded. It wasn't really an accident, but I learned to respect fumes.
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 06:16


Mixed acid/salt nitrating baths are nasty to prepare, but I still end up doing it over nitric acid distillation for a few simple things. I find a few measures can greatly reduce the horrible mist and fumes that result. Making sure the nitrate salt is very dry and properly sieved for lumps before addition, and to pre chill the sulfuric. I add slow additions with mag stirring and cover with foil. The beaker then goes in the fridge to re-chill before use. If done properly a nearly clear solution can be had, with minimal fuming.



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Pyro
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 10:30


well, i nitrate with nitric acid, and i just mix them room temperature, it just gets warm enough to hurt if you hold it for a while, and i usually only get a few whisps of white fume, i think the water caused it, and got the sulfuric to decompose the cellulose into carbon and water, producing more to continue in a vicious circle.



all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. :D
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 11:12


It is well known that runaways can occur in preparations of nitrocellulose. This is caused by improper cooling. The red fumes indicate that the cause probably was a nitration runaway, not decomposition of cellulose. If decomposition to carbon was the main cause, then the cellulose would not dissolve, but would turn black right away.
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 12:17


Mine (so far) envolves lithium and water. I took apart a battery and threw the entire wad of lithium in water. It went fine for a second then it lit on fire and shot burning lithium everywhere. I was wearing a face shield and was unhurt.

I took that solution of LiOH and added more lithium to it so I could have a more concentrated solution. I added smaller peices this time and I went fine. It finished and then the metal dish blew up! I think some of the lithium melted and got on the wall of the container. Then the water touched and it went BOOM :o I lost my lithium solution to my patio...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6dpzXddW1g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAsEXtTDVDQ&feature=chan...

I managed to record both of them. I used an aluminum tripod and later realized that it was pitted pretty badly.
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Pyro
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[*] posted on 30-4-2012 at 13:09


could be, but why just this time? and the only thing left was a clear liquid



all above information is intellectual property of Pyro. :D
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[*] posted on 5-5-2012 at 21:03


Nothing too bad, but I was using chloroform one afternoon and was pouring it into a column. For some reason I had my head up next to the funnel I was using and caught a huge wiff of it! Knocked me quickly on my @ss. Won't be breathing that stuff in again anytime soon!

Also, I was heating a solution, without a boiling chip or stir bar and was going to crash it out with ether. The solution was too hot for the ether, that it immediately boiled all over the fume hood. UGH! Wasn't a cheap product either...




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CrEaTiVePyroScience
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[*] posted on 22-5-2012 at 09:05


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK0TneymrCM

Another example of an horrible accident of a flash powder (LE) explosion.
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Phantom
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[*] posted on 24-5-2012 at 13:50


Quote: Originally posted by CrEaTiVePyroScience  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK0TneymrCM

Another example of an horrible accident of a flash powder (LE) explosion.


This is what I just post when a opend this topic. By the way it was ANFO not flash powder.




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CrEaTiVePyroScience
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[*] posted on 25-5-2012 at 07:53


@Phantom Ow I am sorry , looks like for somehow reason I didn't read that.

And by the way, I really got my doubts about that being ANFO because the video itself is labeled as "firework accident" and here in Europe, there are alot of commercial firecrackers which contain produce about that kind of explosion examples are "Big boy , delova rana , cobra 6 , Achtung , BSC Italia" they contain flash powder (20-100g). The explosion itself also wasn't that hard and since ANFO is a territairy explosive , it's really useless to detonate such small amounts of ANFO because its very insensitive. IF it was ANFO it would've only been 30g at most and ANFO explosions are normally starting from 200g , which would kill you. 30g ANFO explosion really are really rare.

What makes you think he used ANFO?

[Edited on 25-5-2012 by CrEaTiVePyroScience]
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Phantom
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[*] posted on 25-5-2012 at 10:59


Well, when I first watched the video and I was looking at the tags of it, It contained ANFO, miedziankit, HMTD etc. People who dunno shit about explosives they just say "firework" even if it was TNT. Also flash powder releases white dense smoke cloud and here right after the explosion you can see a brownish cloud which is probably NO2 gas. It could be 50-100g from the sound and the demage. If you look carefully you can see his leg was injured as well and probably his chest and his other hand but because of the adrenaline he could only scream and run for help.

[Edited on 25-5-2012 by Phantom]




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CrEaTiVePyroScience
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[*] posted on 25-5-2012 at 12:05


After looking more closely I agree with you that hes knee is bleeding and both his hands are ripped off. The color of the smoke can also be due the casing which is ripped in a million piecies finely distributed in the air. I am guessing at 40-50g of ANFO because I think that 100g of ANFO would collapse your lungs due the shockwave if it explodes that close to your body.

And I think you are also right about it not being a firework because the fuse at the start produces way more smoke than a normal visco fuse would do which contains black powder, that fuse contains kno3/sugar (If i look at the smoke). I also dont understand why the fuse is that short? He must have been really stupid ?

Also flash powder would produce a large amount of light, which also isn't visible!


[Edited on 25-5-2012 by CrEaTiVePyroScience]

[Edited on 25-5-2012 by CrEaTiVePyroScience]
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[*] posted on 29-5-2012 at 04:51


As taken from a explosive incidents report (can't find it, maybe someone else will):

"The accident occurred on the 12th of December 2006 next to the railway bridge on the river Vah, opposite Budatin Castle [seen in background] in Zilina, Slovakia. The victim, Adamovi K prepared what in pre-fire pictures looks like it could be ammonium nitrate and nitromethane (ANNM) which looks like a purple slurry (presumably from the dyes sometimes added to nitro fuels), in a plastic container which looks like it could hold about 200g. Initiated by a homemade blasting cap made from a glass vial containing a homemade primary explosive (HMTD/TATP), which was inserted into the secondary explosive slurry. It's not known why detonation occurred prematurely, but cotton wool may have been used to seal the fuse inside the vile of primary explosive, which failed... The victims right hand was severely damaged and had to be amputated."

Even if it was flash the result would have been the same. The discussion as to what it was is irrelevant; he clearly had a big fuse-related issue.
A good reminder for anyone playing russian roulette.
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