chemical fires

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mr_calico

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Feb 22, 2006
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Right, so iv read that its possible to start fires in the 'sas' survival book' and other places with potassium permanganate and glycerine. And as pot.perm. is in my survival kit i though id give this a go.
i bought some glycerine from a local pharmesist and put a small blob of this on a peice of tin foil, i then sprinkled a few grains of the permanganate (powdered not crystals BTW) onto the glycerine. wait a little-nothing happens.
tryed putting some more on, waited- still nothing. so i put more on and mixed it all together will a little stick and the glycerine now goes into a v.deep purple gloop with all the permanganate in it. but still nothing even after waiting 5 mins....:grumpy:
So do any of you have any suggestions as to why this didnt work? in pictures on the net it looks like they use equal amounts of both so i kept adding more pot.perm. untill theres was roughly the same amount of both. could it be that i need crystals instead of powder although i would have though powder would be better- more surface area, or maybe the wrong type of glycerine (if there is more than one type?).....?
 
Perhaps you need a spark. Potassium permanganate has excess oxygen and glycerine has carbon and hydrogen. The two would then react to give Co2 and H2O and should do it rather violently.
 
I've seen it done, although I haven't done it. What's the purity of the glicerine?

As a side matter, KMnO4 is a fairly weak water purifier. It does a lot to kill the bad taste, but little to kill the bugs. The runs will kill you. I'd rather carry Iodine.
 
The glycerine is 100% (its from chemist for sore throats, etc, nothing added), also the potasium permanganate is 99.4 %

from what it says in the sas survival book and from some pictures of it been done on the net i think it should just spontaniusly combust, but i will try giving it a spark and let you know how its goes...

i didnt know that KMn04 wasnt that effective, you learn so much here:thumbup: i do carry tincture of iodine in my pack as a purifier and antiseptic, but i would like to keep the permanganate in there also as a backup, and it takes up little room anyway. also i think if i can get this chem fire thing to work it will be usefull then for more than one thing, as i think this could be good in times of no tinder.

Thankyou for the help:thumbup: and ill let you know how the spark thing goes....
 
I tryed your idea of a spark Mete and experimented a little and heres what i found (i feel like a scientist hehe:D )....

I started off lighting mixtures with a lit match (wooden end) to see what would happen.
With a mixture that is mainly PP (potasium permanganate) and a little glycerine so it is very thick, it set fire very easy, and burnt vigorously with little jets of flame shooting out of the mixture. it burn out quite quickly/didnt last long.
With a mixture of mainly glycerine so that it was just like deep purple runny glycerine, i found it harder to set alight, but when it did light it burnt very smoothly (no jets of flame, just like the flame of a candle wick or something) and it also burnt a lot longer than the first thicker mixture.

Now i tryed lighting a thick mixture (because this was easyer to light) with a fire-flint, but it would not set it on fire after about 10 attempts so i gave up. The only way to set it of with a flint was to put some cotton wool on top and use the flint to light this, which then lights the mixture, and this was certainly less affective than good ol vaseline-cotton balls.

So it seems pretty useless so far.
But if anyone has any experience of getting this to work or anymore suggestions would be much appreciated as i think this stuff could light a fire without the need for tinder, if ever in that situation.

Mr_calico.
 
It's been more years ago than I like to think about but my grade school science teacher did the potassium permanganate/glycerine demo and he got instant fire. Small mound of permanganate on an asbestos pad, dripped some glycerine on top & instant flame.
Gne :D
 
I watched the video link that you sent Peter La, and did it how they did it, and it worked. Youve got to make a mound of the permanganate and then drop a little bit of glycerine onto it and after about 30 secs it just goes off. So you need a lot of permanganate to very little glycerine, that is where i was going wrong.

It does burn up quite quickly (about 10 secs), you could use this to ignite the runny mixture i made earlier for a longer burning mixture, if needed.

Anyway thats the way to do it folks...
 
To Peter La i got mine off some guy on Ebay, was quite cheap £2.50 for 100 grams.
Bought the glycerine in the local chemists, i think super markets sell it for cooking aswell.
 
Hey Calico. Pot perm is a powerful oxidizer not a fuel. Getting the reaction to work is like tuning a carburetor, it is all about mixture. I've done this reaction many times with plain sugar and pot perm. I pour about 1/4 teaspoon of plain sugar onto a piece of wood. It works best if the wood has a slightly hollowed out place for the chemicals. Then I add a dozen or so grain of pot perm and mix slightly. At this point if you have any ashes add just a touch. Then grind the mixture firmly into the hollow in the wood. A few seconds grinding should produce ignition. That's it. If this doesn't work for you I'll try to post some pics.

BTW as a fulltime firefighter I took several classes on investigation and prevention where improvised ignition devices were discussed and produced. One class required us to build and demonstate an iid. I won't give the details but many devices including chemical incendiaries can be made from common household or grocery store items. If you need glycerine you can use 1950s type hair gel like Brylcreem.
 
yeah 2dogs i read about this also in the sas survival book, wiseman recomends stamping on it to get it going, but i think your way sounds a lot better.:thumbup:
do you add the ashes as a source of carbon, like charcoal in gunpowder, to help it burn better/longer?
im gonna have to give this one a go.....

anyone know of any other combustible mixtures of common and usefull chemicals,(keep it legal, please)?
 
Hey Guys..

The best way I have done it is with PP and Glycol antifreezer,,either straight or taken from the rad of a car...

Works Very well and every time...

ttyle

Eric...
 
I had a similar problem with some permanganate, took 5+ min to ignite w/ glycerin. I had been storing the permanganate in a small nalgene (lexan) 2 oz container, and it started to loose a bit of color (not as purple as the properly stored powder). I just took out some fresh powder out of the containers the permanganate shipped in, put two piles side by side - the fresh stuff went up in <20 sec, and the other one still hadn't ignited after a few min ---> key thing is what to store it in, the original containers look like HDPE, so I'm going to try that for my survival kit. fun stuff though when it works.

For the sugar mix, I'm guessing you don't mix it til you want to use it, right? or is it a pretty stable mixture? Cheers, David
 
iv tried the PP and sugar one quite a few times now and cant get it to work, am i just a retard at this? ppl make it sound easy. :D .
what sort of friction do you need? i put the mixture in a little hole in a peice of wood and then pressed down on it hard & grinding with a chisel put nothin happend after a few minutes.
have tried this with different mixtures like a lot of PP and a few grains of sugar and then kept trying and adding sugar until it was 50/50. then the other way round with a lot of sugar and kept adding PP.

This one would be better for a survival kit because sugar is very usefull but i dont know many uses for glycerine.
 
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