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Nitroglycerine C3H5N3O9:



C3H8O3+3HNO3=>C3H5N3O9+3H2O

Nitroglycerine has picked up a very bad name for itself over the years. It was first manufactured by Alfred Nobel and later he started the Nobel Peace Prize because of all the lives that nitroglycerine had claimed. It's production isn't the most complicated, but you still have to be very careful. It's probably better that most people believe that looking at it wrong will cause it to detonate because all of it's precursors can be obtained relatively easily. While it's production isn't hard at all it has to be closely monitored or very bad things will happen. If the temperature raises to much while making acetone peroxide, you just get the dimer version. If the temperature raises to much while you're nitrating the glycerine then you'll get a runaway nitration and NO2 fumes will billow out in clouds and many bad things will happen... So make sure to watch the temperature carefully.

Things You'll Need:

ReagentsApparatus
25mL 99.5% Glycerine, C3H5(OH)3Glass Beaker
50mL 70% Nitric Acid, HNO3Thermometer
100mL 98% Sulfuric Acid, H2SO4Drying Pan


Obtaining Reagents:

You can get glycerin at your local drug store as a sweetner or at your local farming store as horse lubricant or something, I'm not 100% sure what for but I know you can get it there. Sulfuric Acid can be obtained at a hardware store as drain cleaner but you'll need to do a density check for concentration. Nitric acid will be the hardest thing to get, you'll have to order it or synthesize it.

Procedure:

Of course first you mix your acids together in order to make a nitrating mixture. Do this slowly and avoid any spattering. Cool them down to 10*C and now you're ready to begin the glycerine addition. During the addition you should never let the temperature rise above 15*C, but on the other hand you should try not to let it sink below 10*C. If it's too hot you'll get a runaway nitration, if it's too cold then the nitroglycerine won't form. Temperature control is very neccessary for producing nitroglycerine. Make sure you have an icebath and some extra ice because the ice tends to melt quickly. I keep some ammonium nitrate nearby so that if it starts to get to hot I can dump that in the icebath and it'll cool it down much faster than a regular salt icebath (you did remember the salt?). It takes me about 10-15 minutes to add that much glycerine so that'll give you a slight idea of how fast you need to add it. Swirl the flask during the whole addition in order to avoid hotspots. You can stir with the thermometer but it isn't recommended as most people aren't professionals and will scrape the bottom and sides. After you have all the glycerine added then you should pour the contents into about a liter of cold water. Extract the nitro with a seperatory funnel or a turkey baster or something. I use this little pump thing used to suck up sea monkey's. It'll clump together so I use my pump thingy to push it around until it's in one big pile then suck it all up at once. Put the nitro into 500mL of distilled water for a few hours with occasional stirring. Try to break it up into small bubbles so more of it will be exposed to the fresh water and it'll be neutralized quicker. After that I extract it and add it to a 500mL sodium bicarbonate solution. I leave it in there for 12 hours with occasional stirring and breaking up of the main blob. After that I put it in a fresh solution of sodium bicarbonate. I leave it in there for another 12 hours with more stirring. Then I extract it again and put it in 500mL of distilled water again for a few hours. Remember, if not properly neutralized nitroglyerine will be EXTREMELY sensitive. Improper neutralization is what leads to horrible accidents. If 25mL of nitro goes off in your hands consider them gone, possibly half your arms too. Now it's time to dry it. Extract it again and add it to a saturated solution of sodium chloride (salt). I'm not real sure why you do this, maybe it cuts down on drying time. I don't always do it and things turn out fine. Put it in a shallow dish and allow all the water to evaporate.

Storage:

Add acetone until it's 50/50 then it'll be perfectly storable and transportable. If you want to get your NG back just pour it out into a shallow dish and allow the acetone to evaporate. NG has been safely stored for ten years before using this method.

Picric Acid, C6(NO2)3OH:




C9H8O4 + 11H2SO4 + 4KNO3 => C6(NO2)3OH + 4KHSO4 + 3H2O + CO2 + HNO3 + 7H2SO4 + CH3COOH

Picric acid can also be called trinitrophenol, TNP, 2, 4, 6 trinitrophenol, lyddite, and shemose. I like to call it TNP but most people call it picric acid so that's what I used. For a long time it was used for the main filler in all kinds of shells. Later on though cheaper and less sensitive explosives were developed so it's use declined (TNT). Picric acid can occasionally be found as a laboratory reagent but most labs have probably rid themselves of it by now. It can also be used to make other picric salt such as ammonium picrate or lead picrate. Because of the formation of these sensitive salts it shouldn't be allowed to contact any metals. Naturally it's acidic as it's name suggests so if you have something that becomes more sensitive when it's acidic *cough* peroxides *cough* then I suggest you keep it away from those too. It will stain your skin yellow for days or a week if you allow to contact your skin so wear gloves. I repeat, wear gloves. It is toxic. When it's dry don't inhale the dust, it's toxic. Since it used to be so popular there are several ways of making it but I'm only doing the one that I used. You can use acetylsalicylic acid, salicylic acid, phenol, or benzene to make it. It's weight is 229.11 g/mol with a maximum density of 1.763 g/mL. It's VoD is 7480 m/s.
----MSDS Here----

Things You'll Need


ReagentsApparatus
30g Acetylsalicylic Acid, C9H8O4Glass Beaker
75g Potassium Nitrate, KNO3Stirring Rod
150mL Sulfuric Acid, H2SO4Thermometer
300mL Acetone, C3H6OFilter Paper
Funnel


Procedure:


To obtain pure acetylsalicylic acid go out and buy the cheapest asprin you can find. Depending on how big your tablets are (mine are 325mg) you'll need to crush up about 100. After they're crushed dissolve them in the acetone then filter the acetone to remove all the impurities. Then let the acetone sit in a shallow dish for a few hours (took me about six) in a warm place until all the acetone evaporates. You probably don't need this much acetone but I want all the ASA to dissolve so I use some extra. Now you have pure ASA that can be turned into TNP. You may want to crush up your pure ASA so it'll be at least semi powder-like. Put the sulfuric acid into a beaker and heat it to 60-70*C using a hot water/oil/sand bath. After it's hot start adding the ASA. If you didn't crush it well it'll take a long time to dissolve but if you did a good job it will dissolve in minutes. During the addition the solution will turn from clear, to orange, to red, and finally to black. I then waited for 30 minutes while keeping it around 60-70 so that the mixture will convert the ASA to phenol then into a sulfonic mixture. Next I started adding the KNO3 at a rate of about 1-1.5 g/min. During this addition CO2 and HNO3 fumes will be released, along with some NO2 (not much though). After I add some it foams for a few seconds, then when the reaction stops I add a little more. The foam will be red from the NO2 fumes. You probably won't need a hot bath to keep it warm during this addition. If you add the KNO3 too fast there will be LOTS of NO2...so watch out. During the KNO3 addition the solution turned from black to a clear red color. Now I let it cool to room temperature the cool it further to 5*C. By this time the solution will have turned into almost a solid block of impure TNP. Here is where my procedure gets a little sketchy. You should pour off any extra H2SO4 then add the TNP to 200mL of water with around 400g of crushed ice. Then cool this back down to 5*C and use two filters to filter it. Hopefully it won't dissolve your filters (it is acidic after all), if it does just recover as much of it as you can. Check Mr. Cool and ALENGOSVIG's pages for more info on filtering as I definitely haven't perfected it yet. To purify it (which you should do) dissolve it in boiling (and I mean boiling) water. 400mL of boiling water should dissolve around 15g of impure TNP. Filter the solution while it's hot to remove impurities. Cool it back down to 5*C and filter off the yellow crystals. The impure crystals always seemed a cream yellow color where the pure ones seem sharp yellow...you'll know what I mean after you finish.

Storage:



You should store your TNP in 10% water if you plan on storing it for more than a week or two. I normally use mine within at least a month of producing it so after it dries I just wrap it up in something and keep it in a dark place (just in case). Oh, and read the MSDS report, if I took the time to link to it I expect people to read it.
----MSDS Here----

Erythritol Tetranitrate, C4H6N4O12




C4H10O4 + 4HNO3 => C4H6N4O12 + 4H2O

It's also called ETN, 1,2,3,4-Butanetetrayl tetranitrate, Cardilate, Tetranitrol, and many other names. Erythritol is just another sweetner like mannitol or sorbitol that you nitrate into something worth using. Oh yes, it's very castable. A little warm water and it's flowin' good. I think one thing that will help you get better yields is stirring it thouroughly and maybe a longer nitration time. It has positive oxygen balance. It weighs 302.111 g/mol. It has a VoD of around 7650 (taken from the roguesci thread Here) It has a melting point of 61*C and deflagrates at 160*C. It's soluble in acetone, glycerine, and ether (I think, acetone is for sure though). Enough with this, on to the procedure.

Things You'll Need:


ReagentsApparatus
15g Erythritol, C4H10O4Glass Beaker
48g Ammonium Nitrate, NH4NO3Thermomter
105mL 91% Sulfuric Acid, H2SO4


Procedure:



First add your ammonium nitrate to your sulfuric acid then let the temperature cool to 10*C-20*C. The whole reaction is done in this temperature range. After it cool add your erythritol to the mixture which should now be fuming (because of the nitric acid formed). The temperature barely raised a degree when I added the erythritol so I just added it practically all at once...with constant stirring. I had to take it out of the icebath for a minute to get the temperature back up but it started to heat up too much so I put it back in. Eventually it balanced out and I left it to nitrate for 30 minutes. During the addition the solution became white and turned to about the consistency of cream to match it. When I came back it looked the same so I stirred it some more then dumped it into 2 liters of cold water with a little ice in it. A very fine percipitate settled on the bottom, there was about a gram or so suspended and floating. I filtered all this (which took forever) then neutralized it with a sodium bicarbonate solution. My yield was 21g. After drying some of it started to turn yellow indicating that it probably wasn't completely neutralized so I reneutralized that portion. When I was doing the neutralizing it stopped fizzing long before I stopped pouring the sodium bicarbonate solution which brings me to the conclusion that you should take extra time to make sure it's fully neutralized.

Storage:



Right now I have no idea how it stores but I figure it stores fairly well. Update: It stores very well wet, dry, or in solution (as far as I can tell).
By the way, I figured out today that it'd cost me $9.33 to make 100g of ETN...not bad.

Cellulose Nitrate C6H7(ONO2)3O:




Source: http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~sglover/CHEM110TopicG/sld019.htm

C6H10O5 + 3HNO3 => C6H7N3O10 + 3H2O

Cellulose nitrate is often referred to as nitrocellulose. Cellulose nitrate is used widely in (or is) guncotton, black powder, double-base powders, and other things like those. It is fairly simple to make. It’s probably the easiest nitration out there. You can use whatever amounts of acid you want as long as you maintain a 35/65 ratio by volume of nitric acid to sulfuric acid. Of course you’ll also have to adjust how much cotton you use too. It detonates at 7700 m/s and has a molecular weight of 281.13 g/mol. It’s density is 1.2 g/ml. It’s fairly stable but will require a detonator to get it to make the deflagration to detonation transition (DDT).

Things You'll Need:



ReagentsApparatus
30 mL 70% Nitric Acid, HNO3Glass Beaker
70 mL 91% Sulfuric Acid, H2SO4Glass Stirring Rod
5 g cottonGraduated Cylinder
Thermometer

Alternate Precursors:


100mL 91% Sulfuric Acid-H2SO4
60g Ammonium Nitrate-NH4NO3
11g Cellulose-C6H10O5 (I wanted to use 15g cellulose but 11g was all I could get under the acids.)

Procedure:


Add your nitric acid to your sulfuric acid in the glass beaker then let this cool to around 30*C. This is a nitrating mixture (I seriously hope you knew that before now). After it’s cooled/heated start adding the cotton. Don’t add it all at once though. Put some in then stir it around for a little while then put in some more cotton. If you add it all at once it could turn into a runaway nitration with red NO2 fumes going everywhere. Although in this nitration that doesn’t happen very often unless you’re using large quantities. I added all my cotton within five minutes and it didn't runaway. Stuff all the cotton down into the acids so that it's all submerged and is being exposed to the acid. You should let it sit for about 30 minutes to allow complete nitration. After that I poured off any excess acids then added the cellulose nitrate to 500 mL of boiling water. I let it sit for a little while then poured off that water then added it to another batch of boiling water. Then I once again extracted the cellulose nitrate and added it to a boiling sodium bicarbonate solution (which isn't technically sodium bicarbonate...). After letting it sit for about 20 minutes with stirring every once and a while I added it to another solution of sodium bicarbonate. Then I squeezed all the extra water out of it and washed washed it with distilled water. Finally, I squeezed it out one last time and laid it out to dry. From 5 g of cotton I got back 6 g of cellulose nitrate.
Using Alternate Precursors:
I added the ammonium nitrate to the sulfuric acid and let it cool to 7*C (that just happened to be the temperature outside at the time). Then I started adding my cotton balls. I used an ice bath at the beginning to keep it cool. It took my about ten minutes to add all of the cellulose. After that I left it to nitrate for 45 minutes. When I came back I poured off the excess acids and washed it with hot running water for about 5 minutes then put it in a sodium bicarbonate solution for about 30 minutes then washed it for another little while, squeezed it out and left it to dry. The yield seems a pretty pretty good. From 11g of cellulose I got back 16.2g.

Storage:

Cellulose nitrate is very storage stable providing that you've properly neutralized it. Just keep it in a cool dark place away from fire and detonators.



You should try going back home.



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