Posted on 07/31/2007 6:14:27 PM PDT by SandRat
FALLUJAH — The 329th Chemical Platoon, Task Force Phantom, Multi-National Corps-Iraq, participated in a joint operation July 12-17 to recover a large quantity of nitric acid found in a cache in the city of Fallujah.
The platoon, a reserve unit from Winter Park, Fla., helped remove of 40,000 gallons of the acid, said Army Sgt. 1st Class Timothy Hart, platoon leader, 329th Chem. Platoon, TF Phantom, MNC-I.
Nitric acid is a toxic, acidic, colorless liquid used to make fertilizers, dyes, explosives and other chemicals.
Twenty Soldiers from the platoon worked in conjunction with Marines from Multi-National Force-West and Soldiers from Multi-National Division-Center on the four-day mission to complete the task.
“Our mission was to aid in the recovery of the nitric acid,” Hart said. “Our job is to secure it so it cannot be manufactured and made into homemade explosives that are used against Coalition Forces,” Hart said.
Army Capt. Eric Dunkley, commander, Headquarters and Headquarters Company, TF Phantom, MNC-I, said he feels involvement in missions like this improves safety of Soldiers on the battlefield and deeply impacts chemical Soldiers down the road.
“They support MNC-I not just for (hazardous material) identification, but to see that it is properly stored and moved for disposal,” he said. “The majority of the work they have done here not only impacts the units in the affected battle space but the schoolhouse training in the rear. The unit is having a large impact.”
Great. The birch bark atomic bomb.
What will they think of next.
‘scuse me, I gotta dig a hole in the back yard.
Paging jveritas.
Saddam wanted this stuff, with other wmd precursors for something. Now what would it be?
Exactly Eagle6. Thanks for the ping.
Ping
No, but I did try pouring some Dihydrogen Monoxide in it once. Pretty similar results, from what I understand.
So, mix whatever it was with glycerin and maybe nothing of interest happens.
If it really was nitric acid and the color was merely misreported, then nitroglycerin is not the only problem. Most high explosives are made using this substance. Nitroglycerin is not typically used in combat roles because it is very sensitive to shock.
That is interesting indeed. All of the nitric acid I have seen starts out brownish red when manufactured. Perhaps the process used colors it. From your observation, it must react with the air. Ours was made in glass retorts with a water-cooled condenser. There was air in that system.
I'll be dipped in camel feces.
Well, those guys found a serious explosive manufacturing facility. That is a lot of nitric acid!
The reagent decomposses by reacting with contaminants in the air. ...reducable dusts and fumes. The acid oxidizes the contaminants and loses NO2. It also decomposes by the action of UV light. Thermal decomp follows the same path.
2HNO3-uv->4NO2 + 2H2O + O2.
In your lab prep of the acid, you mixed sulfuric acid with an inorganic nitrate salt, like NaNO3. Then heated it. The reaction goes as follows:
H2SO4 + 2NaNO3 -> HNO3 + Na2SO4
The HNO3 should have distilled off at 80 some degrees. You heated the stuff in room air and got thermal decomposition. Warm NO2 is red brown, because it has an unpaired electron. It forms a colorless dimer at a temp somewhere below 25C.
I think the stuff was commercial acid used mostly for metal finishing ops. They certainly would have said something regarding shuting dowm a clandestine explosive manf facility if that were the case. More likely the jihadists would use this as slime. The acid itself will detonate with roughly an equivalent weight of HE also. This has 32% water, so much will just be slime. That decomp reaction and the necessity for other materials and equipment, prevents the ignorant from making expl in any significant quantity. Seeing yellows, reds and browns in that kind of op generally means folks should have left the building yesterday.
2 tankers, or as palletized freight.
I gawked at a book that described the manufacturing processes of high explosives. I'm not a chemist, so GAD that was complicated. It sure doesn't seem that manufacturing explosives is something for the uninitiated.
TNT and RDX are certainly the most desirable military explosives. Those processes seemed pretty unfriendly.
" It sure doesn't seem that manufacturing explosives is something for the uninitiated."
Yes, that's why they generally have work accidents, the DOD goes after their "experts", and the jihadists normally use stuff like this as slime if they don't have an "expert", the rest of the components, or equipment/facilities. To make bombs, they usually rely on stuff obtained from commercial, or military sources. To get the RDX equiv, they probably just empty out grenades, which contain ~1/4lb each.
nitric is colorless untill exposed to sunlight, at which point it turns rusty red. If produced in clear labware in a sunlit room it will turn red during production. If kept out of sunlight, it will keep colorless indefinitely.
Nitric acid can perform many non-explosive and useful functions which do not seem to be addressed in this forum. Yes, being a military order, one can conclude that they were designing wmd’s, however, perhaps they simply needed to refine metals for various economic benefits, or leech compounds from mines. To a point the reasoning presented thus far seems akin to “my neighbor is holding a steak knife so he must want to kill me” without paying attention to the fact that he is standing in front of a barbeque grill.
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