dimanganese heptaoxide based explosives

Really??!! That worked?? I have not had the chance to use large ammounts of this stuff, but the small ammounts I added to water hydrolyzed to permanganic acid.

Isolated through filtration? Care to elaborate? As everything is liquid I do not see the point of this, morover you used some sort of glass filter right?

I am not 100% sure what you have is Mn2O7 with all this talk of washing with water and filtering.

EDIT: I made a bit of Mn2O7 and added it to water, it lasted longer than I expected, but still dissolved too fast to make a water wash work.

[Edited on 27-3-2006 by rogue chemist]

Well when you added it to water the water did become purple right? For me the green drop slowly dissolves leaving a purple trail. See I used a really small ammount, essentially a single drop of it, so if you have several mls, dissolution would have been much slower and less noticeable. Personally I have found it difficult to get the pure Mn2O7 separate from the solution of it in sulfuric acid. I havent got around to following the method in Brauer which produces it pure.

Yours at least catches a piece of toilet paper on fire right? Thats my favorite thing to do with it

Man, I just tried a mix of Aluminum, Iron III oxide and sulfur initated by dropping a few drops of Mn207 onto the powder.... 15 seconds later, KAAAAFOMPH... an absolutely spectacular incendary mix was born.

this stuff is EVIL!

Quote:

Originally posted by kABOOM! this stuff is EVIL!

And thats why we love it
Attached is the method to produce it pure.

kABOOM, could you please specify precisely what you did to make the Mn2O7? From all your posts I have an idea, but a nice step by step recipe would be nice. I know the method, posted by rogue chemist, but your method sounds very interesting, because it works with water.

If you provide us with a step by step methof of preparing your compound (whether it is Mn2O7 or not), then I'll try to repeat it (but not with the large amounts you used, I care too much about my fingers ) and see whether it really is Mn2O7.

I once made a few drops of this, in a warm and very dusty room. I had the drops on a nice glass plate and what I saw was really wonderful. Every few seconds I saw little flashes/specks of light at the surface of the drop. These little flashes were due to dust particles, which when they entered the drop, were oxidized at once, with the production of little flashes of "fire". While I was staring at the wonderful phenomenon it suddenly did BANG ! Without any apparent reason it exploded and a cloud of fluffy MnO2 was produced.

Awesome, Woelen. Very nice photo/video shots!
Could you tell precisely how you made Mn2O7, and how you extracted it? Similar to what Kaboom wrote? Also, if you are up for it, did you test its properties in the presence of dust, minor organic impurities, and so on? Temperature sensitivity? There should be a large amount of experiments that could be easily done and recorded... I am sure also that this prep would be (in conjunction with kabooms thoughts/observations) would be worthy of an entry in the library!

I tried reposting one of your images here (with the green oil, http://woelen.scheikunde.net/science/chem/exps/mn2o7/exp7.jp... )to have a picture forever, but somehow I coulnt get it to work, don't ask me why.


PS Why the heck does it show 'don\'t ask me why.' - I never told it to do so! I think that's why my image uplink didnt work

[Edited on 29-3-2006 by chemoleo]

...not sure, but it might! Try it out and see what happens... hell, its easy enough to make. Just, play safe.

Making it is very simple. Just put KMnO4 in concentrated H2SO4 and the oil separates from the liquid. It takes some time however. With some glass dropper (very carefully cleaned) you can take away the liquid.
Many years ago, I did the test for its stability in the presence of dust (see a few posts above) . Well, I can say, it is NOT stable in the presence of dust. It just explodes.
I've never done experiments with temperature. The stuff I made is at room temperature. It gives of a very thin purple vapor, which stains the glass nearby with a purple color (you have seen that on my webpage). This purple stain is produced always, even if no reaction is carried out with the material.

I personally would not make it in more than tiny quantities, and I certainly would not store it. It is a very nice compound for funny experiments (purple fire with paper, little explosions, flashing as demonstrated on my page), but no serious things can be done with it. Just too unstable.

The Brauer procedure for making it pure is quite the adventure!

I scaled it down 10 times. Kneeding the pure Mn2O7 oil out of the porous MnO2 is pretty nerve wracking, however after 20 min the oil flowed out well enough. I collected about half a mL of it in a 10 ml volumetric. Now the fun starts. I poured(pipette would not reach down neck well) a few drops of it on some kleenex. I was expecting instant flash as usual, but it just made the kleenex green. 10s later 'fwump' which actually did decent shredding damage to the kleenex. Now as I had poured it, there was a drip of the pure oil on the side of the volumetric, so when I put it down on my cork covered lab bench, it touched cork and BANG(really loud, like a small ammount of silver fulminate). Luckily the contents of the volumetric did not detonate as well. Then as I was kind of shaking by this point I used the rest to make a solution of HMnO4.

The attached picture shows how volatile the Mn2O7 is. This is after 13h of sitting in the mortar and pestle.

I posted the Brauer procedure in an attachment up above in this thread. The advantage is that you produce it pure, free of potassium and sulfate ions(assuming you do not use too much H2SO4), as opposed to the 'standard' method when you just add KMnO4 to sulfuric acid and pour the resultant solution on stuff.

It is interesting, the kneeding process that is, as after letting it sit overnight, it looks like you just have MnO2, but when it is carefully scraped into a corner, the morter angled, and carefully pressed with the pestle, the Mn2O7 flows to the lower part of the pestle. It takes quite some time to get a good flow as the MnO2 is quite porous, eventually it gleams green with the Mn2O7 oozing from it.

btw, I neglected to clean my mortar and pestle with chromosulfuric acid as the procedure calls for, and I did not suffer disastrous circumstances as a result.

The vapours of it seem to be effectvly blocked by a dust mask.

EDIT: Any time I say 'flows' above really means slowly oozes.

[Edited on 30-7-2006 by rogue chemist]

That would be kind of analogous to the reaction of iodine pentoxide and conc. H2SO4 to make (IO)2SO4, and pure iodosyl sulfate, without acid will do SEAr on aryl comounds to produce the corresponding iodosoaryl compound. With acid, more complicated polyvalent iodine compounds are formed such as diphenyl iodosobenzene +. An attempt at such a reaction on resorcinol lead to a spectacular runaway, big cloud of iodine vapour.

But back to the MnO3+, I imagine it could be used in nucleophilic aromatic substitution, but the direct metal-carbon may make things wonky somehow, I don't know enough about that sort of chemistry. As the Mn2O7 is really MnO3+(manganosyl? what is the name for this ion?) permanganate technically, perhaps like I2O5, it could hydrolyse in other acids making stuff like manganosyl sulfate(likely a better, less violent 'manganosylating' agent, analogous to (IO)2SO4), manganosyl perchlorate, and all sorts of fun stuff like that.

OK, I made up too many words in that post.

EDIT: Next time I make Mn2O7 I am definatly going to attempt 'manganosyl perchlorate' by dissolving Mn2O7 in perchloric acid. At VERY low temp of course

[Edited on 1-8-2006 by rogue chemist]

EDIT: Thanks Axt for the name of the MnO3+ ion.
I like the sound of permanganyl perchlorate.

[Edited on 1-8-2006 by rogue chemist]

Food for thought

This is what was said:

<i>"<b>Methyl manganese trioxide</b> (CH₃MnO₃: This Useful oxidant and catalyst is highly exothermic whereby the fuel-laden methyl moiety is oxidized by the unusually labile oxygen available at the high-valent metal centre. Unfortunately, this material is too reactive to be compatible with a variety of sate-of-the-art formulations."</i>

"A similar concept has been demonstrated with pyrophoric rocket fuels. A combination a pyrophoric fuel and oxidizer are placed in numerous tubes. A small explosive at the center suddenly mixes them, and the rocket fuel combustion becomes part of the explosion. "

That's a cool idea, actually. A 6x6x8 inch block of wax, 9 holes drilled into it (6.5 inches deep, so not all the way through). 9 6" test tubes filled with Mn2O7, stuck into the wax slightly, with the open end covering the open hole. Keep it wax-side up, until ready to set off.

Flips over, the Mn2O7 will quickly (if it's not too cold out, it REALLY thickens up and slows it's reactivity if it's under -5C) fill the wax holes. If the quantities are right, it should produce one hell of a detonation. Have your camera ready, I want to see it on youtube

if you would want somehow to detonate the MnO7 you could try (obviously with great care) to pack it in a plastic bag, use a small detonator and blow it into some aluminium, magnesium or magnalium powder soaked in xylene..
as youve heard before.. 50 mL
that could very easily get out of hand, very fast..

Quote: Originally posted by Trotsky

9 6" test tubes filled with Mn2O7, stuck into the block of wax

Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland

One idea would be to place a tube of Mn2O7 at the center of a liquid fuel. The detonation of the Mn2O7 would suddenly cause mixture of the resulting oxygen by-product with the fuel. My guess is that there would be a slight delay before the oxygen-fuel mixture spontaneously ignited. The initial force of the explosion would blow out any flame, quickly thereafter the remnants of the Mn2O7 would spontaneously ignite. Placing the whole thing a thick walled container to help contain the initial small detonation and fuel-oxygen mixture would likely also help. A similar concept has been demonstrated with pyrophoric rocket fuels. A combination a pyrophoric fuel and oxidizer are placed in numerous tubes. A small explosive at the center suddenly mixes them, and the rocket fuel combustion becomes part of the explosion.

This idea is fantastically stupid and a fine way to end up in the ICU.

Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland

Quote: Originally posted by Trotsky   9 6" test tubes filled with Mn2O7, stuck into the block of wax I really do not think wax would work too well. Much better to use a liquid fuel that can easily be vaporized by the shock wave, and intimately mix with the oxidizer. If wax was used it would just fly out in pulverised clumps. The surface area would be much lower, and thus you would get a much slower reaction rate - probably not even an explosion at all. It is true that somewhere else I stated that wax will work just as well as flammable liquid fuel in detonatable mixtures with chlorate. But this is only because the detonation is happening within the wax, which is also already well pre-mixed with the oxidizer, it can be added. In the case of an explosive blast suddenly shattering tubes and mixing pyrophoric fuel with oxidizer, the initial force of the blast is only enough to mix the reactants, not to vaporize them. Because the reactants being mixed are not actually part of the first explosion itself.

Quote: Originally posted by Trotsky

I imagine pure MnO7 is a different story, this was just KMnO7+H2SO4 method stuff,

Quote: Originally posted by SM2

Yeah, best to treat this as if it were NCL3. BTW, is MN207 fairly stable when dissolved in an appropriate solvent? Like 50% Mn207 in isopropanol (am I pushing it?). Perhaps lower concentrations in a different solvent. Brown bottle it for sure, and avoid contamination at all costs.

Quote: Originally posted by Trotsky

Aside from water, which will ruin it, I don't know of a solvent that it won't destroy.