Dug - 2023-12-15
Ep 6 RDX part 2
you should have been a chemistry teacher, you're very amazing, I have chemists in my family, and they would be very proud that there are people out there like yourself still into this amazing combustible chemistry. thank you
Had no idea Christian Bale moon lights as a chemist! Love it
Love the vibe, channel's a hidden gem for sure
Yes, vibe is on point.
This guy is gonna be on the news for not cool stuff some day
The literary brilliance of the intro is Shakespearean. It's poetry.
I thought it was beavis and butthead.
I've missed you Dugan! Thanks for coming back <3
He uploaded less than a week ago calm down. Hes right tho good too see you uploading
@@thegold3538 this is the first video I've seen since his request for help, my bad dawg.
"It's just like Burger King, you just have it your way." Haha, good stuff.
I had all this info separately but he is my hero putting it all together like this in a convenient easy to understand package!
Long live the all knowing Dugan!
Been watching my notifications since the first part! Great to see you again, the energetics videos are awesome.
dank set of videos! you've done a better job teaching chem than my school teachers. thanks for the time you've spent on your vid.
Wow, accidentally stumbled across your semi new channel Dugan. Love the presentation of the videos, the explanation of equipment or reasons why to do it a certain way over another, it just really helps to someone with no chem background. Hope you're doing great man!
Даг, ты лучший по энергетике на ютубу! Привет тебе из Москвы! Надеюсь посмотреть от тебя побольше химии,очень классно преподносишь материал!
Been anxiously awaiting this one! Best cooking channel on YouTube.
its crazy to think about the factories the CRANKED out huge amounts of RDX during WWII. they had accidents too, and there are some good documentaries about the poor souls who got obliterated in factory accidents making warheads for the war effort. There is a decent pucker factor just making a small amount for research (or whatever reason) in the gram range. imagine making 20 pounds of RDX in a big vat, and then knowing you are going to cram it into a steel case later to make a gravity bomb to be dropped on Germany. 20 is just a guess, i imagine they made much larger batches at a time. its also interesting that such an old energetic is still being used right now. a lot of the munitions in Ukraine probably have RDX
There are huge environmental contamination problems around those factories that are still causing problems today unfortunately.
Imagine whipping up 2 tons of it to mix with 2 tons of tnt to fill one Grand Slam Bomb.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 I read a story about an old gold mine in Nova Scotia, where over the course of several years of operation, small quantities of nitroglycerine from their blasting was some how getting spilled in their tailings pile outside the mine shaft. Maybe they always measured out thier charges in that spot before proceeding into the mine, I can't remember how it kept accumulating there. At some point, after many years, there was enough of it there that it got set off and blew the pile up. Can't remember if anyone got killed, but apparently it can persist in the open elements for a long time.
it was an extremely interesting presentation. I would even say as extreme as a "runaway situation" can be, from an intellectual point of view
of course hahaha! Your explanations were clear, precise and you raised points concerning reactivity linked to temperature which particularly appealed to me. You have a way of presenting the subject in such manner that was very stimulating ; you captivated my attention from start to finish.
Thank you very much for this good work, sincerely.
Oh no Dugan has enough subs to go live. …
The chuckle on the dump bucket for run away. The tune show visual of having too small a dump bucket ran thru my head too. Lol
so good to have you back dug. love ya man
Dugans out here doing gods work. I appreciate you, man.
Glad to have you back dugan!!! We missed you so much 😭
Nice finaly the 2nd part! I hope this channel won't disappear like some other similar channels ...
I love the fact you filmed a runaway. I've never seen one in person thankfully. But I can see how it could become deadly very quickly.
Based on solubility, acetone accounts for the majority of chem costs for RDX, even for one recryst. cycle. Dissolve/crash seems prohibitive except as expedient for small experiments/demos. I wonder if repeatedly cycling solvent temp while alternately filtering crystals and (nearly) re-saturating solution using perhaps 100ml:60g acetone-RDX ratio (after 10-ish cycles) would not accomplish the lion’s share of the purification done in a 100ml:15g crash. Just a thought.
You can recover it by distillation if you really want but watch the temperature.
Did I miss where you discussed nitric acid % ? Can 70% be used? I have never seen anything above 70% ever sold
86% is sold as red fuming nitric acid and 95%+ is sold as white fuming nitric acid.
like you said. the fact that all of this shit is going onn in the world is the reason learning energetics. knowledge is a weapon everybody is allowed to have
I love you Dugan, keep doing what you do man!
I'm watching with great interest. You look like a young Bradley Cooper)
dude i must be stupid or something but i finally recognized you. glad to see youre getting by dugan. nothing but love brother. climb to glory
Do you take requests?
I'd like to see a video on eph 20 priming compound, and synthesis of smokeless powder if thats something you can do.
The primer mixtures is doable but we were talking about NC on discord a couple weeks ago and it’s wildly difficult to get good quality and good yields in a home environment.
The risk of accumulation is way to important in your protocol due to the low addition temperature. Also there is no thermal sink that can help the synthesis get under control trough evaporation. You can adapt the procedure by having hexamine disolved in acetic acid and to add it to aceticanhydride, amonium nitrate, nitric acid and more acetic acid dropwise. Work at higher temperature in a three neck flask with a mechanical agitator, a condensor and a temperature probe. This way if you ever risk runing into a runaway, the acetic acid will boiloff , condense and keep the reaction at a safe temperature. In the industry some process are adding all reagent using flow metered pump and are performing the reaction in a jacketed pipe reactor at high flow rate.
Where in the hell are you gonna get acetic anhydride?
@@BearValleyPyro If you can't make AA you have no business making high explosives ;)
@@aterteeI have made RDX before by making HDN first. I tried this method and the yield was shit.
I am not as advanced as you, I just like messing around is all.
I would say "fuck, I'm on a list now".... But I don't think there's a list anymore. 😂
Thank very well explain, about runaway factors
Hi Dugan, great video! One question I have is about quenching and washing with sodium carbonate / bicarbonate. In many reactions, one will not substitute for the other- the pH of bicarb solution is typically around 8.5, whereas carbonate solution is more like 12. Have you achieved the same results using either material?
Thanks for posting!
Yes that's true they are different. pKa of carb is around 10 and bicarb is about 6. The quenching should be done with water, which also acts to dilute acidity. The bicarb or carb wash is next. Either are beyond what is necessary at 5%. The actual K method uses 5% sodium carbonate wash only. Either or can be used.
if i am unable to get pure nitric acid and need to use 70%, other than needing to add more is there any decrease in finished product or quality?
There is high loss in yield. There is no difference in product.
@@duganashley1337 i've looked and can't find anything over 83% is refining it up to 100% the only option or do you have any other recommendations? Thanks for the quick reply earlier!!!
How does a guy get started in amateur accelerants I find chemistry fascinating but don’t know where to start
Sciencemadness forums
How low can you get the reaction temperature? Like could you use a dry ice ethanol bath instead of an ice bath?
can you comment on the ideal angle of a copper liner in a conical shaped charge as a function of of the VOD of the propellant?
No, I cannot. There are probably only one or two people living on earth that could answer a question like that in good faith off the top of their head. Shape charges can be used with a range of angles and liners. Steel drilling is probably the most sensitive for an optimum angle. If drilling or boring in earth you can get really sloppy with angles. Ive used plastic funnels in the past and cut the stems off for shaped charges. Blasting tanks, equipment etc. Many funnels, many different angles. You can go up to ~90 I think. I havent measured angles on penetrator munition, but it's usually more acute. If it gets too tight you will get divergence in the jet. Standoff distance for jet formation is more critical than liner material or velocity for shape charge effect. The gains from liner materials are practically indistinguishable in the field IMO. The normal velocity is ~8 km/s which is the baseline spec velocity of comp B. Usually from PETN or RDX. But you can go lower velocity. I don't know how low you can go though... I hope that helps, That's all Ive got
Awesome and very approachable video. Thank you sir.
Do you bother with neutralizing the acid and recovering it as a nitrate salt to make more acid later? Also, are you adding an acid scavenger like urea to your recryst water?
Im not going to show anything about recovery because it's too big of a topic. The spent acid from nitration of RDX can sometimes be an explosive hazard depending on how it's processed towards a recovery. Nitric acid and ammonium nitrate are the common targeted recovery products. On a small scale I don't recover anything. I dont use an acid scavenger for RDX, only a bicarb wash and 3x recrys. For ETN I use urea as scavenger and recrys 3 or even more times. ETN in my experience purifies with more difficulty than PETN. Samples of PETN and ETN I have made using mirrored process and the PETN stored indefinitely, while the ETN had mild decomposition. ETN is worth the additional efforts to purify to get a stable product.
@@duganashley1337thanks brother, always good to hear how others are doing things. I agree that acid recovery is a large and complex topic. Thanks!
Can amonium nitrate be replaced by potassium nitrate?
Guys
Do we need pure ammonium nitrate or can we used ammonium nitrate without purification after bisulfate sodium and nitrate sodium reaction ?
Thanks and best regard for your response ?
😂 your choice of gentle classical music during nitration is exquisite.....does it calm the reaction down ?. Or have no influence on thermodynamics.?.. are you obsessed with triple bonded nitrogen you clever man. ❤
I start with HDN. I have a dozen PDF files on this subject.
HDN is 2x lower heat of nitration, but direct hexamine is a magnitude faster to yield. But the k method uses hexamine. HDN can be substituted if weight is adjusted. But in RDX generally, HDN isn't necessary. I have found during keto rdx synthesis, HDN is almost mandatory because of the wild heat of reaction. I've had actual live runaways out of nowhere during K6 using hexamine. while RDX is fairly safe. @darianballard2074
@@duganashley1337 Fun stuff. I love to make PETN over just about any other compound like this. Have you ever tried doing melt cast with ETN? I've done ETN melt with RDX and also done it with PETN. Very powerful mix and no need for pressing. Good video by the way. 😁
Thank you. Ive watched all of your videos in the past and enjoy them as well. I appreciate PETN too. I prefer it over RDX. I absolutely love ETN. erythritol is $3-$4/lb. I haven't covered it yet because it is a dangerous topic if I don't really cover it well. So many people blow off their body parts and kill themselves with ETN. @@darianballard2074
HI brother
Can you give me a pdf on the topic of RDX please
Now how do you plasticize your Cyclonite?
Tried this but I made 2 mistakes.
1. I didn't wait for it to cool to 20C before quenching.
2. I poured it into the bicarb wash pail instead of the icewater pail.
There was a tiny amount of precipitate but not much I only did a 4 gram batch so I thought it might have worked.
I filtered and there was hardly anything in the coffee filter . . . After I squeezed the water out of the filter and scraped everything up there was an amount the size of half of a standard marble. It burned like it was supposed to, but the yield just wasn't there. Did I screw it up with the 2 mistakes?
First time also so didn't expect allot but also didn't expect nothing. 😂
Could be my HNO3 but it is still funing so IDK . . . I shall try again.
And, could you make a video for type 2 RDX synthesis as well?
I was traumatized by undergrad ochem but I love hearing people talk about chemistry passionately, good ahit Dugan
@duganashley1337 when using nitric acid for recrystalizations correct me if I’m wrong you would evaporate the acid at that point would you have to neutralize the acid again
Yes! Finally, the YT algorithm gods approved me being recommended something like this. You would think all the KCLO3, C6H3N3O7, etc. Videos would have expedited this, but nope.
Will RDX explode with acetone peroxide?
@christopherleubner6633 - 2023-12-17
One very neat thing to do with RDX is to mix with a small amount of aluminum powder and graphite and bind it with a sparing amount silicone or another plastic such as PVC. This makes it moldable and very insensitive. However, using a small capacitor it can be easily detonated without needing a blasting cap. About 1kV at 5uF or so delivered by a high speed switch with about 1mm electrode spacing at the surface of the charge. Have a blast ❤
@duganashley1337 - 2023-12-17
Interesting, thanks! Will have to do a video on some various PBXs sometime.
@duganashley1337 - 2023-12-30
this channel is for people over 18 years old@@pazsion
@TheRokwood1 - 2024-05-08
😢
@comrademonke5934 - 2024-05-17
are you sure that RDX can be detonated by electric shock instead of lead azide, I had done some research in the past and all of the answers said it's semi impossible, so idk.
@christopherleubner6633 - 2024-05-30
@@comrademonke5934yup the plasma and shockwave will detonate it reliably. What happenes is the aluminum and graphite conduct and form an arc. The pressure wave fron the arc plus the extreme heat detonate the RDX bulk material. The capacitor must be low ESR, wiring must be heavy and the switch must be fast.❤