Tetryl & other Azides

[Vortex]

I was just looking up some other high-velocity booster charges
and came across Tetryl -(Trinotropheynl-Methylnitramine)
it was a big military booster charge ,, but they stopped making it

Then there are the Azides, there are many, more popular one is- Lead Azide
which is supposed to be a great booster. but a little tough to make

both Tetryl and lead Azide have high det velocities of like 15,000 fps
but both are not so easy to make. just wondering if anyone here
has tried to make one of these, and has had much luck with them.
and if so, what might be an easy sythesis for either one

Vortex

[X-ray Cat]

Nah, haven't done it.. I've been scanning virtually every synth i've seen if it can be preparated with the stuff i've lying around but a "solution of 20 mL of N,N-dimethylaniline" is not one of those things hahaha.. However, if you could point out of synth for dimethylaniline or a product it might be in, i might give it a shot..

[uchiacon]

ideas on where to get the sodium azide..?

[willi-wurm]

sodium azide isnt easy to get. it is used in pharmacology, and some specialist chemical suppliers might supply just this, with heaps of security functions though.

if your making it yourself, id do it in two steps. you would need elemental sodium (replaceable with lithium from batteries?) and anhydrous ammonia.

2Na + 2NH3 = 2NaNH2 + H2

giving you the sodium amide crucial for the amide to azide reaction.
i havent heard of it before, but couldnt you replace the sodium with the much easier to obtain lithium? ammonia isnt too hard. just get some ammonium nitrate and mix it with sulphuric acid, pass the gas through some cotton, and collect it in some kind of balloon or beaker, or whatever you have. make sure its all dry. now im not sure, would you burn the sodium in presence of ammonia, or does it just oxidise like that? i dont know.

sodium amide should be kept away from water. i assume you will move on to the amide to azide reaction straight away.

now, as we can see, NaNH2 needs to swap those 2 hydrogen atoms with nitrogen atoms. there are 2 approaches to this, both without catalysts;

one of these uses sodium amide and nitroxide (N2O)

NaNH2 + N2O = NaN3 + H2O at 180 degrees

but this is complicated, as you cant make aqueous sodium amide solutions . i assume you dissolve it in a hydrocarbon.

the other one uses an alkali nitrate salt and an alkali amide. you should use identical metals. (so either both sodium or both lithium, or whatever.)

NaNO3 + 3NaNH2 = NaN3 + 3NaOH + NH3

but you can clearly see which one is more efficient. however, the top one does look alot harder, and at the bottom, you only have to deal with the NH3 gas, which isnt too bad.



i myself have yet to try making azides, but they look cool, and i love the name [: i am still horribly scared of all things poisonous, and this makes up part of the fear to get started on this reaction, not to mention the source of amide salts.

[X-ray Cat]

Originally Posted by willi-wurm

. just get some ammonium nitrate and mix it with sulphuric acid, pass the gas through some cotton, and collect it in some kind of balloon or beaker, or whatever you have.

That will actually make nitrocellulose.. not anhydrous ammoniumhydroxide

[willi-wurm]

no, it wont. what i am meaning, sorry for my wrong expression.

i mean, you have your sulphuric acid and ammonium nitrate vessel, and the gas produced in the reaction is passed though some cotton wool (to dry it, it doesnt actually react). the sulphuric acid and NH4NO3 isnt relevant to the reaction, its only about the gas the reaction produces. i am not saying that you add the cotton to the nitration solutions. and its ammonia im looking for, not ammonium hydroxide.

[X-ray Cat]

I might get this wrong, but any mixture with sulphuric acid and ammonium nitrate will only produce nitric acid gass and some nitrous oxides. Not ammoniak gas. Ammonia is actually a solution of ammoniak gas in water thus forming ammonium hydroxide.

Plus if you want to dry gasses you never use cotton for as far as my experience goes.. you always dry gasses by passing it through concentrated sulfuric acid or calcium chloride..


Mixing sodium hydroxide with ammonium nitrate should produce ammoniak gass (NH3), shoud.. not sure though. Well, it actually produces ammonium hydroxide but as that is just a solution in water which will be saturated at some point (or if you boil it, it'll escape too) the gass will probably escape in great quantity...

[willi-wurm]

oh im sorry! I meant sodium hydroxide.. i was thinking of this video i saw. but no, i dried it with cotton, worked great.

actually adding anhydrous sodium hydroxide to ammonium nitrate will lots of ammonia, and sodium nitrate.

i take everything back D:

[[Lt]]

Yea I can vouch for this because I use ammonium sulfate and sodium hydroxide to produce ammonia for my TACC experiments, same principles I guess.