dgsh009 Posted January 1 Posted January 1 hi dear friends I want to use fertilizer potassium nitrate in pyrotechnics , is it pure enough for this? ( I read about crystallization process to increase the purity, but i read it seems is not necessary)
WSM Posted January 1 Posted January 1 Hi gdsh009, The trick to using fertilizer grade potassium nitrate in pyrotechnics is reducing the particle size fine enough. 100 mesh and finer usually works for most purposes. Another point is to get as pure a grade as possible. I used to grind prilled potassium nitrate to a fine powder, and even with the additives added for the prilling process, it worked fine for rockets and also reasonably well for glitter compositions. These days, if I were to get fertilizer grade, I seek out "greenhouse grade" which is more pure. It still needs to be milled to a fine powder, and works for all but the most exacting formulations. Good luck and Happy New Year. WSM
dgsh009 Posted January 2 Author Posted January 2 17 hours ago, WSM said: Hi gdsh009, The trick to using fertilizer grade potassium nitrate in pyrotechnics is reducing the particle size fine enough. 100 mesh and finer usually works for most purposes. Another point is to get as pure a grade as possible. I used to grind prilled potassium nitrate to a fine powder, and even with the additives added for the prilling process, it worked fine for rockets and also reasonably well for glitter compositions. These days, if I were to get fertilizer grade, I seek out "greenhouse grade" which is more pure. It still needs to be milled to a fine powder, and works for all but the most exacting formulations. Good luck and Happy New Year. WSM hi wsm So kno3 fertilizers have good purity for our pyro works. just need grinding and sieving. Happy new year too my friend.🌲
Zumber Posted January 2 Posted January 2 22 minutes ago, dgsh009 said: hi wsm So kno3 fertilizers have good purity for our pyro works. just need grinding and sieving. Happy new year too my friend.🌲 It's not easy to say unless you test it in batch. Pyro grade and fertilizer grade both are available and both have different purity. In India three grades are available PPP,PPPP,PPPPP grade KNO3 with increase in number of 'P' it's purity increases. 5 P grade is most purest and good for pyro industry.
dgsh009 Posted January 2 Author Posted January 2 31 minutes ago, Zumber said: It's not easy to say unless you test it in batch. Pyro grade and fertilizer grade both are available and both have different purity. In India three grades are available PPP,PPPP,PPPPP grade KNO3 with increase in number of 'P' it's purity increases. 5 P grade is most purest and good for pyro industry. Do you test other grades?
WSM Posted January 3 Posted January 3 On 1/2/2025 at 4:21 AM, dgsh009 said: hi wsm So kno3 fertilizers have good purity for our pyro works. just need grinding and sieving. Happy new year too my friend.🌲 Most fertilizer grades I've dealt with are in the 95% and higher purity and worked fairly to very well. If you encounter lower grades, they will give poorer results unless you make the effort to purify them, usually by dissolving in pure water and recrystallizing, drying and powdering it (the more times it's recrystallized, the higher the resultant purity). If higher quality KNO3 is available and affordable, I recommend using the best you can afford, depending on your planned uses. WSM
dgsh009 Posted January 3 Author Posted January 3 50 minutes ago, WSM said: Most fertilizer grades I've dealt with are in the 95% and higher purity and worked fairly to very well. If you encounter lower grades, they will give poorer results unless you make the effort to purify them, usually by dissolving in pure water and recrystallizing, drying and powdering it (the more times it's recrystallized, the higher the resultant purity). If higher quality KNO3 is available and affordable, I recommend using the best you can afford, depending on your planned uses. WSM So must be good for use. thanks
dgsh009 Posted January 3 Author Posted January 3 On 1/2/2025 at 7:02 PM, Zumber said: I have tested all. How they work in composition? (fertilizer & industrial grade) Are they effective and suitable for pyro targets?
Zumber Posted January 3 Posted January 3 PPP may work for fountain (colour star specially) it creates slow burning bp. PPPP is for slow priming and other bp based primes. PPPPP is superior among all of them and used for most applications like spolette,lift charge, stars ,burst charge and much more. I actually not prepared samples from agriculture grade. All above grades I have mentioned is from pyro chemicals supplier and they can be used for agriculture purpose too.
dgsh009 Posted January 3 Author Posted January 3 (edited) 1 hour ago, Zumber said: PPP may work for fountain (colour star specially) it creates slow burning bp. PPPP is for slow priming and other bp based primes. PPPPP is superior among all of them and used for most applications like spolette,lift charge, stars ,burst charge and much more. I actually not prepared samples from agriculture grade. All above grades I have mentioned is from pyro chemicals supplier and they can be used for agriculture purpose too. do you know purity percentage numbers of the grades? Edited January 3 by dgsh009
PyroGnome Posted April 11 Posted April 11 Haifa specialty fertilizer grades are generally all very high percentage. It goes GG == pHast < Reci < Absolute They have a somewhat useful page that vaguely explains how to calculate KNO3 percentage from the fertilizer value on the label for pure KNO3 fertilizers. https://www.haifa-group.com/haifa-blog/how-calculate-npk-formulae GG is minimum 98.3% before accounting for the water percentage shown on the sheet for the product and any listed ranges, but I've seen the actual percentage quoted at closer to 99.8% which seems to be standard. Absolute (for hydroponic systems) is minimum 99.884% so it's way up there on the purity scale. Hydro systems and the similar recirculating (Haifa Reci) have more strict requirements than most labs need in reagent grade chemicals but I've never actually seen that one for sale... and honestly even if I was buying by the 50lb bag, I wouldn't bother spending an extra $0.20 / lb to get it instead of the less pure GG, because that stuff is already good enough that I can make RPH for stingers with no ball mill and I'm struggling to think of any situation where very slight sodium contamination and shift towards yellow would hurt a comp... Haifa's website is terrible and tends to redirect to dead pages on their blog so it gets hard to find the other data but most of the impurities in all of those are small amounts of inert material which probably can't be helped due to the industrial scale they operate on (dust gets into the storage, conveyor belts shed tiny particles, etc) and some percentage water
Arthur Posted April 11 Posted April 11 Fertiliser comes in different grades, some more suitabe than others. Buy a moderate amount and try some favourite recipes! If it works, that brand is OK. If it doesn't work work out what went wrong. Remember that the real era for canons and black powder was before the ingredients could be purified as they are now. 1
Richtee Posted April 12 Posted April 12 8 hours ago, Arthur said: Remember that the real era for canons and black powder was before the ingredients could be purified as they are now. Hear hear... stables, volcanos and fallen logs.
Arthur Posted April 12 Posted April 12 One modern amateur test for black powder was done with a mortar and a cricket ball or baseball. Weigh exactly an amount of your chosen BP (say 20g) and fire the ball into the sky (safe place etc) then as you test lots of batches of powder you should understand what makes powder good, fast and powerful.
Recommended Posts