whitewolf_573 Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 I have found a store in my city that sells potassium nitrate (Krista K horticultural grade) and it has a anticaking agent.Is an anticaking agent (as a additive added by the manufacturer to the product, in this case KNO3) counter-productive to the use in pyrotechnics?In my case would be mostly for bp (for meal, burst charge, priming stars and lift, but also for stars , although i could get a purer kno3 from inoxia (uk - i live in europe), if using in star compositions or other things could ruin color or effects.In the chemical specifications says:NITROGEN ( 100% NITRATE) 13.6 %POTASSIUM K2O 45,8 %CHLORIDE 0.4 %INSOLUBLES 0.1 %I have find also a online store that sells kno3 fertilizer grade too, but i dont know yet it it has anticaking agent added or not.Also i suspect that the purity of that kno3 is 90%, as in a paragraph it says "Approximately 75% of potassium nitrate is manufactured with a purity of 90 % for use as fertilizer" i have sent them a email asking about purity and if anticaking is added.
Col Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) By the numbers, krista-k is 98.12%, krista-k plus is 98.88%. Either one is fine for pyro purposes, paying over 4x the price per kg to gain less than 0.5% just isnt worth it. Edited January 23, 2015 by Col
pyrojig Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 Never noticed a lack in performance for either stars or powder. It is the best bang for the buck. Nitrates are very forgiving to impurities especially in those small amounts. Now if it was color comps then the purity of the chems is more important .
FlaMtnBkr Posted January 23, 2015 Posted January 23, 2015 How do you know it has anti cake in it? Usually that is only needed when something is a fine powder and most KNO3 I have seen is granular about like table salt. Some is prills but not as common. Just never seen fertilizer say it has anti cake. I've used a 50 lb bag of Krista K nitrate and it was good stuff and worked well.
whitewolf_573 Posted January 23, 2015 Author Posted January 23, 2015 (edited) FlaMtnBkr, i have just looked at the web store that sells in my city the Krista K , and it says nothing of having anticaking agent. I think i see it in yara.us, but was for krista K plus. I suspect now, that krista k (not the plus one) hasn't got any anticake, anyway, either if has it or not ,as for what we use it works well , shouldn't be a problem. I will go tomorrow morning to the store and buy one or two 25kg bags of krista k, that would last at least one year for making bp and potassium nirate based compositions. Edited January 23, 2015 by whitewolf_573
schroedinger Posted January 24, 2015 Posted January 24, 2015 Krista-k and multi-k from yara are the right ones to get.
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