Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Contaminated Ammonium perchlorate detonating when mixed with sugar and heated.

mysteriusbhoice - 30-7-2020 at 01:31

back when I made AP using perchloric acid it never did this and simply just burnt.
When I made ammonium chlorate aswell using sodium chlorate and ammonium chloride it also never did this and infact burned super patheticly.
Now this batch was made by just mixing all the TACP waste solution with water and boiling and filtering off the CuO and the end product seems to behave weirdly when mixed with sugar.
The only other thing that did this was perchloric acid + sugar and this is MUCH WORSE.
In this video below is a small example of what I mean and this one was milder than the first which shredded up the foil!
video below:
https://youtu.be/_KVL7u1whes
The solution does seem to be slightly acidic as it turns my blue litmus paper red.

[Edited on 30-7-2020 by mysteriusbhoice]

unionised - 30-7-2020 at 02:04

I'm guessing that copper oxide is acting as a catalyst.

mysteriusbhoice - 30-7-2020 at 02:20

cant be because I used a really fine filter to remove CuO and the solution is crystal clear.
I kinda let the solution evaporate too much to near dryness and now redissolved it and its now in the fridge to only get the AP.
The real question is what impurity is causing this type of detonation when mixed with sugar.

[Edited on 30-7-2020 by mysteriusbhoice]

KCLcoal - 12-3-2021 at 05:12

I don't know the manufacturing process you performed, so I'll make a guess.
It seems that the cause is ammonium chlorate or copper chlorate that remained as impurities. These substances are extremely sensitive.

symboom - 12-3-2021 at 22:52

It forms tetramine copper perchlorate an explosive. Usuly it's done with copper hydroxide, ammonia and ammonium perchlorate I'm sure it could still happen with the ammonia but I'm sure that's from the catalytic effect. In this case it was the copper impurity

[Edited on 13-3-2021 by symboom]