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Explosives

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Cellulose nitrate in dynamite is a bad example

I just hid (but did not delete) two sentences saying that Alfred Nobel used cellulose nitrate as a phlegmatizing agent to create dynamite. I also hid the reference.

Alfred Nobel's most famous invention and patents were using diatomaceous earth with nitroglycerin, which he named "dynamite", and patented in multiple countries beginning in 1867. The passage I just removed said Nobel used cellulose nitrate. Mixtures of cellulose nitrate and nitroglycerin are common, but I doubt it is ever called "dynamite", it would be smokeless powder.

I was able to find certain pages of the book that is referenced, and I suspect that it may contain these incorrect or misleading statements about dynamite. So a better source is definitely needed.

The book is not primarily concerned with explosives, the first reference in this article should almost certainly have a focus on explosives. 209.6.225.254 (talk) 03:56, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to go ahead and delete it. I'm pretty sure nitroglycerin was added to NC in smokeless powders in order to stabilize it. Single base smokeless powders eventually eat through other stabilizing agents (diphenylamine) as there are no more locations to nitrate and the nitrogen oxides they release begin attacking the surrounding environment. I haven't looked into why NG stops this from happening but I've found mention of it in a few places now. I'll see if I can find some good info in the Encyclopedia of Explosives under Phlegamtizer; and that has the bonus of being on archive so I can actually link to the thing and users can read it, which to me is a vitally important part of wikipedia... it might be a bit older but if we're talking about high explosives I'd trust something written by Picatinny Arsenal in the 60s over a generic industrial chemistry book written yesterday any day of the week.

Ullmans is my least favorite source (and unfortunately very heavily used) in the chemistry project because everybody seems to reference a different year / edition of it which would be bad enough even if it were fully available online... It's currently on sale at amazon for 40% off, bring the price to a low $5341 for all 40 hardback volumes and 29,456 pages. The 2011 edition of course, which couldn't be used to verify most of the citations... I have relatively short single-book references that are nearly impossible to find anything in, something that gigantic reminds me of the huge number of law books lawyers inevitably keep on the shelves in their offices despite the fact that they almost certainly never use them because they can get access to any case they want to read and all up-to-date laws online. I could see some chemist at a consulting firm buying these to give his office some gravitas, but I doubt they'd ever be spotted reading 'em. The explosives Encyclopedia is fairly huge too at 10 volumes written over a period of something like 25 years, btu at least it has the virtue of being specific. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 14:32, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like this mixture was one of those called dynamite... interesting.^[1] A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 15:15, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Got a bit lost in the details, since colloidon cotton contains NC but isn't NC. Plain NC + NG isn't quite a phlegmatized mixture AFAICT, and smokeless powders use the NC + NG mixture when they need to burn more slowly and more powder needs to be used for larger bore guns like shotguns... in that case the NG slows down the NC's burn, so it gets a bit odd. Smokeless powder up to 50% nitroglycerin and possibly higher is available commercially to anybody who feels like buying it, at least in the US. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 18:22, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

^ Fedoroff, Basil T.; Sheffield, Oliver E. (1966). "D". Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items: Volume 3 - Chlorides through Detonating relays. Vol. 3. U.S. Army Research and Development Command, TACOM, ARDEC, Warheads, Energetics, and Combat Support Center, Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, USA: Defense Technical Information Center. p. 88. DTIC_AD0653029. Liquid HE's (such as NG, NGc or some other nitric esters) can be desensitized by mixing them with substances absorbing or adsorbing them. Such substances can either be inactive (as formerly used kieselguhr) or active (as sawdust, meals, collodion cotton, etc). The resulting combinations, known as Dynamites, are weaker than NG and are not liquid but either powdery or gelatinous.

[1] Fedoroff, Basil T.; Sheffield, Oliver E. (1966). "D". Encyclopedia of Explosives and Related Items: Volume 3 - Chlorides through Detonating relays. Vol. 3. U.S. Army Research and Development Command, TACOM, ARDEC, Warheads, Energetics, and Combat Support Center, Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey, USA: Defense Technical Information Center. p. 88. DTIC_AD0653029. Liquid HE's (such as NG, NGc or some other nitric esters) can be desensitized by mixing them with substances absorbing or adsorbing them. Such substances can either be inactive (as formerly used kieselguhr) or active (as sawdust, meals, collodion cotton, etc). The resulting combinations, known as Dynamites, are weaker than NG and are not liquid but either powdery or gelatinous.

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