Ammonium chloride

[FlaMtnBkr]

I have been experimenting some with smoke formulas and have tried a few that contain ammonium chloride. The stuff I have is about like table salt or sugar and seems fairly hygroscopic. If I ball mill it into a fine powder will I just have a powder that soon turns into a hard rock (I'm in Florida)? Anyone know if it is actually deliquescent? Just trying to find out the best way to use it.

 

From what I have read it seems the ammonium chloride works in smoke by condensing into small droplets. Anyone know if this is true or how it works in smoke comps? On this note, I have also read that potassium chloride can be substituted in smoke formulas and works equally well. Any validity to this?

 

I'm also curious if ammonium chloride, or KCl for that matter, can be used as a chlorine donor?

 

I have tried HC smoke and when it works it produces great amounts of smoke. But HCE isn't the easiest chem to find and also sublimes. I also have trouble getting it to light and stay lit. I have come up with my own formula that to my untrained eye, looks to produce similar amounts of smoke. But it doesn't use any hard to find chemicals and it seems easy to light and stays lit while not wanting to flame up. I'm pretty excited to come up with my own formula that is fairly different than all the formulas I have seen, lights easily, and pumps out tons of white smoke. I'm just a little unsure about the ammonium chloride since it uses a small amount of it. Maybe I should try modifying it to get rid of it and then it will be a really great formula. Anyways, I'm rambling.

 

Edit: it also seems that how the smoke 'bomb' is made is almost as important as the formula. I still have problems with this and is what I need to experiment with next.

 

If anyone has any answers to all my questions, or any thoughts, or comments, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Edited July 30, 2012 by FlaMtnBkr

[WSM]

I have been experimenting some with smoke formulas and have tried a few that contain ammonium chloride. The stuff I have is about like table salt or sugar and seems fairly hygroscopic. If I ball mill it into a fine powder will I just have a powder that soon turns into a hard rock (I'm in Florida)? Anyone know if it is actually deliquescent? Just trying to find out the best way to use it.

From what I have read it seems the ammonium chloride works in smoke by condensing into small droplets. Anyone know if this is true or how it works in smoke comps? On this note, I have also read that potassium chloride can be substituted in smoke formulas and works equally well. Any validity to this?

 

Hi FlaMtnBkr,

 

I've used ammonium chloride for white smoke for about a quarter century. I never mill the NH₄Cl but use it as is. My region averages between 50-80% humidity year-round and I don't have a problem with it. The ammonium chloride works because the smoldering composition (chlorate, sugar and sodium bicarbonate) provide heat to vaporize the chloride which condenses into thick, white smoke when it cools (from the burning composition).

 

Don't add any water to this mix.

I have never tried potassium chloride in the mix.

I don't think I would use ammonium or potassium chlorides as a chlorine donor due to their sensitizing tendencies in some mixtures.

 

Good luck.

 

WSM

[FlaMtnBkr]

Thanks for the info!

 

Is it the chloride ion that can sensitize some mixes? I don't think I've ever read a warning about either chemical except the ammonium ion with certain things. Just curious because I want to be safe as possible and never read about either. Thanks again.

[Mumbles]

The chloride ion can sensitize chlorate mixtures in particular. I've seen it postulated that chloride with chlorate can generate small quantities of the lesser oxoanions such as chlorite (ClO2 -) and hypochlorite (ClO -). Both of these are relatively unstable both thermally and in the presence of fuels/reductants. Soluble chlorides really are never used in real pyrotechnics. Most are too hygroscopic to really be of much use. The only times I really see them are in experimental formulas that will likely never be practical. I do see sodium chloride occasionally, but I really don't consider it to be all that practical either.

 

On the surface it would seem as if adding ammonium chloride would be a double No-No, but it seems to have been used for many generations without issue. To me, it's really ammonium perchlorate that is incompatible with potassium chlorate not necessarily all ammonium salts. Don't get me wrong, ammonium chlorate is nothing to mess around with, and it's probably best to avoid any situation in which it could form. Ammonium perchlorate and potassium chlorate will preferentially form potassium perchlorate and ammonium chlorate due to the extremely low solubility of potassium perchlorate. The same is not true with ammonium chloride and potassium chlorate. That combination prefers to stay as the starting materials due to potassium chlorate being by far the least soluble reagent of the possible starting or end materials.

 

I don't know if potassium chloride would be as useful in a smoke mix like this. I don't believe it is particularly good about subliming. The best chlorides would be ones that sublime and are hygroscopic/water reactive. These would be things like Zinc chloride, aluminum chloride, titanium chloride, tin chloride, and ammonium chloride.

 

This would fit in with these experimental, non-practical, esoteric formulas I mentioned before but it might be interesting to try anhydrous iron (III) chloride or chromium (III) chloride. Iron (III) chloride is dark green which may vaporize, or turn into red/orange rust clouds. Chromium (III) chloride is a metallic purple solid that is insoluble in water and air and water stable for chemical reasons I don't want to get into. This could sublime as a purple cloud or as a green cloud of chromium oxide. The issue that one may run into is that in the presence of any reducing metal (Al, Mg, Zn, etc.) and water that it's going to catalytically convert into soluble and hygroscopic solid due to a factor in this same chemical reason I just mentioned that I don't want to particularly go into.