Copper Oxychloride Fungicide for use in Fireworks

[AustralianPyromaniac]

This thread relates to the viability of copper oxychloride fungicide namely 'Amgrow' copper oxychloride fungicide for use in pyrotechnics.

In Australia, it is possible to buy copper oxychloride from many agricultural suppliers for use as a fungicide. After a bit of research and some chemical calculations, I found that this product is approximately 92% oxychloride but seeing the MSDS' only listed the impurities as "Determined as not-hazardous" I had no idea of what they were or how they would affect the colored stars made with this product. Looking on the APC and Google, I found nothing on the viability or otherwise of this 'agricultural grade' product in fireworks, so I decided to buy a bottle and do some tests.

Below is a video of the results. The first test is the control which is a pile of bentonite. Second is a pile of pure oxychloride and final is a pile of the fungicide. The video is only a rough guide as in person the effect was quite different. What I observed was that the fungicide and pure product were very similar in color except the fungicide was slightly greener.

This image is of the aftermath of testing. The back sample is bentonite. The front left is the pure oxychloride, and the front right is the fungicide. It can be seen that the results are quite different between the samples, the pure oxychloride simply melted and resolidified where are the fungicide chared leaving a black powdered residue. (Flip the image 90* clockwise)

This image is of the two powders on a sheet of paper. On top is the pure oxychloride and on the bottom is the fungicide.

Overall my interpretation of these results so far is that the fungicide is a viable source of copper oxychloride. However, more testing is necessary. I will hopefully be testing this stuff in a comp soon, but until then I'm more than happy to get some input on to what you guys think of this conclusion. I'm also interested to know if you guys in America have this product available to you as a quick US eBay search turned up nothing and it's interesting to see no one talking about its viability.

Appendix (Sort of)

http://www.amgrow.com.au/product/copper-oxychloride/

Copper-Oxychloride-GHS-2016.pdf

Regards, AP

Edited September 18, 2017 by AustralianPyromaniac

[greenlight]

Thats very interesting I gave up looking for this chem a while ago and have been using other copper compounds instead.

I am interested to see how it performs in an actual composition.

 

This is the only one I could find on a ebay haha, a steal at that price thats for sure:

 

https://m.ebay.com/itm/Copper-Oxychloride-Technical-Grade-10g-/231043774422

 

Surely there will be some solvent that the other ingredients dissolve in but the copper oxychloride does not or vice versa.

Edited September 18, 2017 by greenlight

[AustralianPyromaniac]

There probably is some solvent that I could use greenlight but because I have no idea what the impurities are I don't know what to chose. I hope it just works as is!

Regards, AP

[Arthur]

Seems to be a useful resource. A proper star test to see how the colours work would be good. Maybe the "agricultural grade" contains some kind of process rubbish from the production method. You will soon see whether it contains much significant sodium (salts).