i searched and found no significant information on these explosives. as TNP is acidic there should be a vary wide variety of things that can neutralise it. like lead monoxide (yielding lead picrate). i also was thinking could PbO2 from car batteries be used?hhhmmm...also how stable would copper picrate be? there must be lots of basic compounds that can be used but i would guess only a few would be of real use. i am particularly interested in primaries as i think they would be of more use than secondary explosives but all imput will be apprecieated http://theforum.virtualave.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

[This message has been edited by kingspaz (edited August 29, 2001).]

Many things could be used. However, I think that only a few things would be useful, such as the lead and ammonium salts. With metal salts, they may be too sensitive for use, or not sensitive enough for primary usage. You could make salts with urea, methylamine etc, but I'd imagine that these would be no better than the ammonium salt due to the reduced oxygen balance. They may, however, be denser and therefore have higher VoD's, and if you used something like hydrazine or urea or other large molecule with lots of nitrogen then you'll get more gas upon detonation...

In other words, I don't really know what I'm talking about because I've never heard of other picrate salts being used. Silver and mercury might make good primary salts, but they're more expensive than lead. Hmmmmm... you've heard of tetraminecopper nitrate? well what about tetraminecopper picrate?! Probably VERY dangerous if it can be made!

tetraminecopper picrate?!....now that just add about another 100 explosives to all the possibilities brought up in the TACN topic!!! don't see why it wouldn't be possible.

right other picrates...lead, copper, gold, silver, hexamine?...could that be treated with picric instead of nitric?
sodium picrate?...aaaahhhh so many possibilities.

Picrates are interesting.Picrates can be formed easily with inorganic and organic substances,yet I think they are of academic importance only.There are only few picrates that are of practical importance.People are more concerned in the prevention of the reaction of these substances with picric acid that may occur through accident or other means....

Cutefix is right, such salts are unpredictable, but I'm going to write some characteristics of some of them. My information comes from "Chemistry and technology of explosives" by T. Urbañski.
Na:
melting point 270C, activation temp. 313C, sensitivity on hit ( 10% of explosions ) using 10kg dropped from 19cm, sensitivity on flame using special pendoleum - 18 oscilations.
K:
m. p. 250C, a. temp. 331C, using 2kg dropped from 21cm, 10,5 oscilations
Cr:
m. p. 275,5 , a. temp. 323C, using 2kg dropped from 28cm, 53 oscilations
Pb:
2kg dropped from 2cm, 10 oscilations
Ba:
m. p. 200C, a. temp. 332C, 2kg dropped from 2,5cm, 4 oscilations
Cu:
activation temp. 290C, 2 kg dropped from 30cm, 16 oscilations
Fe III:
m. p. 155C, a. temp. 247C, 2 kg dropped from 40cm, 1 oscilation
Mn:
activation temp. 289C, 10kg dropped from 60m, 14,5 oscilations

I hope this information will be useful, I've got a big table of this salts, they are also devided by the amount of crystalized water inside these salts.
If anyone need this table I can scan it and send using email, the main disadvantage is that it is in Polish.

Cutefix is right, such salts are unpredictable, but I'm going to write some characteristics of some of them. My information comes from "Chemistry and technology of explosives" by T. Urbañski.
Na:
melting point 270C, activation temp. 313C, sensitiveness to hit ( 10% of explosions ) using 10kg dropped from 19cm, sensitiveness to flame using special pendoleum - 18 oscilations.
K:
m. p. 250C, a. temp. 331C, using 2kg dropped from 21cm, 10,5 oscilations
Cr:
m. p. 275,5 , a. temp. 323C, using 2kg dropped from 28cm, 53 oscilations
Pb:
2kg dropped from 2cm, 10 oscilations
Ba:
m. p. 200C, a. temp. 332C, 2kg dropped from 2,5cm, 4 oscilations
Cu:
activation temp. 290C, 2 kg dropped from 30cm, 16 oscilations
Fe III:
m. p. 155C, a. temp. 247C, 2 kg dropped from 40cm, 1 oscilation
Mn:
activation temp. 289C, 10kg dropped from 60cm, 14,5 oscilations

I hope this information will be useful, I've got a big table of this salts, they are also devided by the amount of crystalized water inside these salts.
If anyone need this table I can scan it and send using email, the main disadvantage is that it is in Polish.
Sorry for any spelling mistakes.

Do you have any more details on that pendulum to test flame sensitivity? I'm guessing that it basically passes a flame over the salt again and again, so each time it heats up a little more.
Fe(III) looks quite interesting, it seems to resist shock but is very flame sensitive... could be useful.

thanks HNIW. if the Fe(III) salt was reasonably powerful it would be a very good primary. insenstive to impact yet very sensitive to flame meaning it would be very reliable to set off.

could you neutralise picric acid with iron (III) oxide?

This is a balistic pendoleum. It is oscilating over a little pail of explosive. At the end of this pendoleum there is something like a small burner. Balistic pendoleum is often used in army laboratiories to check the sensitivity to flame. NC for example start to burn after 1 oscilation and black powder afer 3 oscilations.
For more information take a book about the test in such laboratories, balistic pendoleum is as often used as led block test because every explosive had to be tested by this device.

Picric salts aren't so simple, for example Fe(III)*10H20 is resistant to friction and hit, recet time I was talkinkg about dehydrated picric salts.
If someone would like to make these salts, better ask me for this table.

thanks HNIW. would it be possible to dehydrate the resulting salt from iron (III) oxide and picric acid by using dehydrated CuSO4?

almost forgot!! can you please post the other tables. thanks agian!!

[This message has been edited by kingspaz (edited September 01, 2001).]

Sorry guys, one mistake had occured. This is a flame pendoleum, but the description is proper.
Balistic pendoleum is used to measure the work that explosive can create, led block test is also used for it.