Sciencemadness Discussion Board

How dangerougs are organic peroxides?

nitropyrotech - 15-10-2025 at 17:28

So I never did organic peroxides especially the two popular candidates TATP and HMTD and wont make em, but how dangerous are they really? I heard stories about germany teens blowing their house up with that stuff like here

https://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/blaulicht-mit-sprengsto...

I really wonder how easily availible the precursors are, its just a trip to the hardware store , there you can prob find everything excapt for hexamine maybe, I also wonder why organic peroxides are so unstable I have some friends of mine handling hmtd, he however says that, it is stable and everyone on the Internet overreact, if they hear about those two candidates. He also showed me a video of him detonate 5g of dry HMTD, he described it as not very loud (not as loud as an flashpowder firecracker), anyone can say something about the safety? I would appreciate

Axt - 15-10-2025 at 22:50

I can only think of two things I've seen detonate just sitting there, undisturbed. HMTD was one, the other was dimethylol peroxide which detonated as its solution was concentrated. Acetone peroxide has the highest impact sensitivity on my list of all things tested, their reputation is deserved.

MrDoctor - 15-10-2025 at 23:50

HMTD is an entirely different beast when it detonates under the pressure of its own combustion. from experience, i would rather light 10g off my bare hand than risk setting off 1g that found its way into the the threads of a plastic bottle or jar or whatever used to store it (pretend its 100% in there, no loose powder in bottle, just all 1000mg in the threading, still wouldnt do it)
i vaporized a watermelon once with a little over 1g of it. the very last time i used it, i think i put just under 2g in a 2L pepsi bottle full of water as a kinetic demonstration, water would offer plenty resistance but the charge itself was loose uncompacted powder, also doing something to water you get a pretty good sense of the forces at play.
the boom from that shook my windows, my neighbors windows, left a muddy crater in the lawn, and set off car alarms down the street, after that i decided never to mess with it again, especially in a dense suburban area but, it made me realize the destructive potential it had under the right conditions.

Any container it is in, becomes a fragmentation grenade, the rules also change a bit because its such a high speed explosion that produces a large amount of uncompressable nitrogen, so most materials will just shatter like glass under the hypersonic shockwave. detonations occuring in car engines eventually have a similar effect on the metal the engine is made of, causing cracks and such not because of the pressure but because of speed and localized magnitude of the sound. detonations also rip jet engines apart when they dont occur when expected or desired.

HMTD lures you into a false sense of security, it should be avoided because first hand experience tells you all the safety warnings are overreactions, just like you have also. since it cant be in contact with metal, people usually put it in plastic, idiots, in glass, both of which dont quite show up on x-ray, or whatever the first emergency imaging you will get when you arrive at the ER and the doctor needs to see where the fragments are, of which there will be many more than any other explosive will produce.

As for TATP, i never touched the stuff, the fact it sublimates forming large crystaline structures almost exclusively in the threading/seals of any container its stored in, that can self detonate just from the snap of breaking or crushing them, there is no way to safely handle it or interact with it if its in a state where it is ready to ignite, it simply WILL ignite, its only a matter of time even if you dont do anything. theres no practical reason to use either of those, better to stick with black powder or flash powder, which take actual skill and effort to get any decent effect or energy out of.
the reason you hear about teens blowing their house up with TATP is because of the abundant availability of acetone and unlike HMTD, there is no real prep or purification needed as acetone is already incredibly pure or it would condense on itself, and peroxide decomposes if its not pure either, the reason it has not proliferated more to the point all peroxide or all acetone gets taken off the shelves is because it tends to just explode if it goes through thermal cycles over days (day/night) in quantities more than a few grams, caking up, then possibly breaking apart, and/or escaping its container. consider this too, if it sublimates all over the interior of a plastic bottle, that crinkly feeling when you squeeze a plastic bottle coated in crust, those individual snaps, the intraparticular friction from that, can potentially cause a detonation. Anyway, i legit believe people get that many accidental or spontaneous ignitions they simply cannot accumilate enough, and they quickly realize what they have been playing with this whole time. also, in a single container i was told once by a pyrotechnics expert, without stabilizer TATP is just plainly prone to spontaneously detonating under its own weight in quantities of over 20g or some, rather modest amount, which i assume isnt literally because of the weight but just the statistical probability that it will interact with itself in a way that triggers an explosion due to the sheer abundance, other than gravity/weight pressure.
And heres the kicker; even if you were to isolate it, a gram at a time, spread far away from one another, the sound from one unit exploding would probably set off those nearby, i think theres a report of it being set off by someone sneezing nearby once.

Radiums Lab - 16-10-2025 at 03:05

I made TATP once and was traumatised by the explosion of 1gm(compressed). It blew my stove up. After that incident I just ignited my product with an open flame to destroy whatever was left. When uncompressed it just deflagrated or poofed up like nitrocellulose

[Edited on 16-10-2025 by Radiums Lab]

Pumukli - 16-10-2025 at 10:41

TATP: decades ago I tried it. After the synthesis it was stored in a well closing plastic bottle - this is I think what saved me. I mean the cap was so well sealing that it prevented the vapours of TATP entering the gaps of the threads so no TATP deposits formed in storage. When I opened this medicine bottle a few months later I found the whole mass (a few grams) recrystallized. The new crystalls was well-developed, like very clean, very organized NaCl crystal cubes, around 1-1.5 mm size.

The original, crude powder was washed with NaHCO3 solution in order to neutralize all the acid (HCl) that was used in the synthesis. I think it might also contributed to my luck and the stability of the recrystallized TATP.

I found this particular batch of TATP surprisingly tolerant towards mechanical abuse. The crystalls still reacted violently when heated but never detonated/deflagrated when were shaken in the bottle, were scooped with a small metal spoon, opened or closed the threaded cap of their bottle, were pressed into small holes, etc. So I can understand why your friend talks about "overreaction".

On the other hand as I became older (wiser) I would not repeat those old "experiments" again. I learnt that the exact behaviour of TATP can't be predicted well. It mutilated at least one young chemistry student in my country (several fingers, from both hands), and probably killed others in an unintended detonation in a train in the '80-ies. This mutilated guy worked for months (years?) with TATP, he even published his findings in a local science-oriented journal in the '90-ies. He wanted to "tame" TATP and tried to utilize it as a "combustion booster" fuel additive in gasoline/diesel motors. Then in a follow up article a year or so later he showed the photo of his mutilated hands that was taken a few minutes after the detonation, in the hospital, after the initial clean up but before the real operation started. Shocking when you see tendons, nerves, bones ending abruptly somewhere in the air, without the usual flesh/skin/nail cover what you expect for a functioning finger!

I also searched TATP in Beillstein's and Chemical Abstracts and found interesting tidbits from the 1910s - 1920s, when the British and the French tried to use it as a military explosive. Their conclusion was: this compound was too unpredictable (too sensitive) for the army.

bariumbromate - 16-10-2025 at 14:41

another thing that will explode undisturbed is fulminating silver!

bnull - 16-10-2025 at 19:16

As far as I could find, there is no mention of TATP in Bretherick's. There is no sensible reason why one would make that stuff in a professional lab as it has no practical use except as an IED explosive.

Organic peroxides, if the rest of the molecular structure has no stabilizing effect (by means of resonance or whatever), have low activation energy: the bond between oxygens is very weak. Thermal or mechanical shock and static discharges provide enough energy to break the bond, which in turn releases a lot of energy. Put together oxygen, organic (=combustible) molecular residues, and energy and you get even more energy.

For a considerable class of organics, you only need oxygen and traces of acid (if I'm not mistaken on this one), sometimes only oxygen as the organic can be oxidized to an acid. In some cases light is necessary (isopropyl alcohol and diethyl ether).

Like I said, if the structure stabilizes the compound, it can resist prolonged heating for a long time. There was a review about the production and stability of organic peroxides. I'll see if I can find it again.

Edit: This one: Walling, Cheves. “Chemistry of the Organic Peroxides.” Radiation Research Supplement 3 (1963): 3–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/3583671.

[Edited on 17-10-2025 by bnull]

MrDoctor - 16-10-2025 at 23:30

Quote: Originally posted by bnull  
As far as I could find, there is no mention of TATP in Bretherick's. There is no sensible reason why one would make that stuff in a professional lab as it has no practical use except as an IED explosive.


Not as such but dimethyldioxirane is very useful, and technically it is mono-acetone peroxide, though idk if it actually polymerizes. i couldnt find the source, but i swear ive read somewhere that, while DMDO only forms in concentrations up to 2% in the reaction mixture, its in an equillibrium with the acetone, oxone and possibly also TATP so for some reactions, its more like the acetone is functioning as a catalyst as long as the reagent to be oxidized is compatible with oxone and TATP, and in a 1-pot reaction it doesnt react with either.
Afaik TATP cant and probs shouldnt be attempted to convert to DMDO, and TATP is just a minor reversible byproduct in the production of something else, but, this acetone peroxide specifically, does see a fair bit of use in metal free reactions.

bnull - 17-10-2025 at 03:20

Quote:
Not as such but dimethyldioxirane is very useful, and technically it is mono-acetone peroxide, though idk if it actually polymerizes. i couldnt find the source, but i swear ive read somewhere that, while DMDO only forms in concentrations up to 2% in the reaction mixture, its in an equillibrium with the acetone, oxone and possibly also TATP so for some reactions, its more like the acetone is functioning as a catalyst as long as the reagent to be oxidized is compatible with oxone and TATP, and in a 1-pot reaction it doesnt react with either.

It is there in Bretherick's. The thing is stable, decomposing slowly at room temperature and quietly on heating, even passed explosivity tests. The crappy yield of DMDO makes it very interesting to use. I think that acetone is simply acting as peroxide carrier, given that it is continually regenerated in the course of the reaction.

The dimer and trimer, in contrast with DMDO, explode when they feel like it.

mayko - 17-10-2025 at 20:48

Methyl ethyl ketone peroxide is relatively tame, as far as such things go. I might not immediately discourage someone from making a small amount. It is also a skin irritant and can splatter when it explodes unconfined

MrDoctor - 18-10-2025 at 03:59

When i visited my father last i was rather concerned to encounter a 5L common HDPE bottle of either 30% or 60% MEK-peroxide, while i was pretty sure even a concentrate would be stable, i wasnt sure about the conditions it was left in, plus based on the label it didnt appear to be possible for individuals to obtain. Fortunately, kind of, when i asked him why he had it, he told me it wasnt MEK peroxide, a friend of his gave it to him, as a "pure concentrated roundup" for maintaining the fenceline efficiently, the bottle just filled up from their workplace and it happened to just be laying around, on the back it read MSMA in marker, this was really not much better after finding out what MSMA means when you are talking about a potent herbicide, the bottle still wound up going to the local dump which fortunately accepts all agricultural chemical waste for free since i guess this happens a lot in farming towns.