Making Flash Cotton / Paper - Magic Trick Fireball (Nitrocellulose) - ElementalMaker

nice hey what's going on guys welcome back to the elemental maker today we're doing a little bit of fun chemistry here with cotton balls you could probably guess where we go we got a couple of concentrated as it's here nitric sulfuric and we're gonna whip up a little batch of nitrocellulose which is also known as dum cotton same stuff that's used for the main base of smokeless powder modern smokeless powder this was actually if I'm recalling correctly the first man-made plastic and again another cool thing that was discovered back since there was a German chemist think his name was Frederick something he was working in his kitchen with a mix of sulfuric and nitric acid spilled a bunch of it on his kitchen table I don't know why the hell he was doing chemistry in his kitchen but we've all been there so spilled these suckers you know mixed together on this table and grabbed the nearest watt washcloth he had to wipe up the mess and he wipes it up throws it up on a clothesline or whatever leaves it dry out and a few hours later the damn thing just bursts into flames so he kind of realized he was on to something there a method of my nitrating cellulose so that kind of became a standard and then I think around 1862 celluloid was actually patented by Alexander something or other but pretty cool stuff what we're gonna make there is just basic nitrocellulose is you know what magicians use for for their stage magic flash cotton and flash paper now from from what we're gonna make we're gonna make nitrated cotton balls but from that you can actually run them in a blender pour that mixer a screen and actually let that dry out and you're gonna get flash paper so it's pretty cool stuff but let's mix up our solutions I'm gonna throw some safety gear on because these are some nasty acids don't want to get them on the skin or or you'll be hurting alright I'm all safety gear it up like it god damn model citizen look at that so I'm gonna start with the sulfuric acid now I have a water bath here in case or an ice bath rather in case anything gets out of control you can basically just dump the whole contents of your reaction right in there and neutralize it real quick I also have the solution of sodium bicarbonate here baking soda and you know if you were to get any on your skin or whatever you can neutralize the acid solution with that also once we're finished with the nitration of the cotton we're gonna put it in there to neutralize all the acids that we get a nice stable compound there's the meniscus just gonna do a reasonably small batch no no reason to go crazy with this stuff those are some tasty fumes now this is what you call a redneck form oh look at that setup love it so I got a fan set up to help pull all the fumes out of here and we're just gonna add a few cotton balls to this mix hopefully you can kind of see have a last stir rod real quick and you always want to make sure you get your balls fully saturated that's pretty critical not just in chemistry but in life so the critical thing about the cotton is you want to make sure it's a hundred percent cotton you can see this stuff hypoallergenic hundred percent cotton made in yousa wherever the hell that is we'll name a country anything nowadays so one of the most dangerous things about this reaction is one the chance of a runaway nitration which can lead to a potential explosion or fire that sort of thing the other is the fumes actually given off by this which there's obviously nitric acid fumes but from the decomposition of nitric acid you can get nitrogen monoxide which then reacts with oxygen in the air and you get nitrogen dioxide which is a really really nasty compound that you do not want to get in your lungs I apologize for the fan noise but uh I'm playing it safe here not trying to prematurely die on my wife so at this point I'm just gonna let them mix it for maybe half an hour or so let the nitronium ions displace the OAH groups on the cellulose and get some cellulose nitrate alright it's been about half an hour I'm gonna take the flash cotton immerse it into the sodium bicarbonate solution yeah that just get those acids neutralized oh good okay that's how you do it that's what the mats for plus uh it's still an alkaline solution rather than the acidic solution so that's good so this solution is now going to be pretty rich in sodium sulfate and sodium nitrate since you know the the carbonate groups are replaced by no.3 and so4 it's all the carbonates in the solution have already been fully neutralized so we are going to have to add more sodium bicarbonate to neutralize the remaining acids so at this point I'm gonna squeeze these out most of the acids have been neutralized squeezed I'm gonna add it to the larger tank of ice water now this solution all probably boiled down and recover the nitrates from so at this point any remaining acids they're just acids that are trapped in the fibers of the cotton well no longer cotton but it once was yeah I think everything is neutralized I'm gonna add a little bit more baking soda and let this sit in here for at least half an hour maybe an hour just to make sure the sodium bicarbonate is able to neutralize the entire structure of the cotton since it's just a solution of sodium bicarbonate it's it's safe to handle without gloves now at least in my opinion I'm sure I'm sure a lab instructor would not agree but I'm not a lab instructor it fans just get it now to stabilize it back in the day they used to add camphor to it and make celluloid film this is actually as I think I previously mentioned this was the first polymer ever produced the best of my knowledge or Wikipedia I guess it was actually used pretty extensively for film so they would make film rolls with it x-ray sheets photography all that sort of stuff and this was actually the cause of a lot of theater fires because it wasn't properly stabilized and there were probably some remaining nitrates in there also over time nitrocellulose will degrade to a small extent and reproduce acids those will further on stabilize it and it can eventually spontaneously catch fire all right so I decant it off the sodium bicarbonate water and it's been about an hour and just giving it a good rinse and some fresh distilled water just to pull any of that bicarbonate out wouldn't hurt to have a small percent of bicarbonate left in there it's not really going to affect burn rate much but it will keep any residual acids neutralized so it's kind of beneficial so I'm just going to reach in there pull are out and we're gonna throw this in the desiccator for probably day or so the testator's pretty quick it might be done in a few hours actually but I'll keep it in there for a day because this stuff does really take a while to dry out so we've got my desiccator going I'll pop that up to 130 degrees just to make it dry out didn't quick calcium chloride on dish throw that in there and then I'll grab the nitrous cellulose and pulse it in alright well it's been about a day in the desiccator and here we are some fully dried much for cellulose flash cotton ready to go let's move this big mass out of the way and see how it works huh whoa spicy that flashes up faster than the case of the herp definitely lost some knuckle hair is gone poor victim nice that's some good stuff see if she burns totally clean damn that's that's pretty well very fast burning some guys will actually nitrate this stuff twice just to ensure everything is fully nitrated but honestly I don't see the point here it's that's as much rated as you can get wonder what will happen if we throw in a little bit in the container you know like contain it gonna make a little firecracker sort of deal I'm gonna roll up a little aluminum foil tube twist off the ends and see if we can add some extra cellulose to it alright let's see if we can get this stuff to make a little bang huh so it's actually nitrocellulose I may have mentioned but it's the primary component in smokeless powder with some stabilizers being added and you a little bit of nitroglycerin that's a double [ __ ] powder but could actually grab a can and see exactly what's in this stuff here's my County unique use this for reloading and let's see if it says what the hell's in this stuff I don't think it's safe yeah but the big thing with these nitrocellulose based propellants is they need to be pressurized in order to work effectively the more pressure they build the better they burn so it's a bit interesting and by no means an expert on this stuff I kind of just got into reloading about a year ago I haven't done a whole lot with it mostly nine-millimeter but it is a bit of fun alright let's stuff a little my true cellulose in there little screwdrivers do just fine hopefully that will be able to contain it just gonna have it help with some vice grips move this the hell away alright let's see what the hell this does gonna throw some pucker goggles on otherwise I might be losing an eye and let's start with a lighter whoa holy [ __ ] moly Jesus oh that was awesome scared the [ __ ] out of me but then that's really cool oh my god can't hear for [ __ ] it up it shot some unburnt pictures cellulose onto the side of my home built PID control hot plate there so I guess it wasn't fully pressurized enough to totally complete combustion but that's it was pretty cool try that again so hopefully on this one I have the end tapped kind of smushed off in a way there that'll better confine it that's some liked room to there smells like a shooting range in here it might be a bit more in the last time nothing wrong with that this one's also a little smaller so it should build pressure faster at least that's my hope all right moment of truth will I lose hearing Wow yep yep I lost here what the hell does Archer say well what won't God well that worked and I think we got complete combustion I don't see or complete the flagellation or detonation I'm not sure which it would be but my ears are ringing like a [ __ ] Orchestra geez that's pretty cool though Wow powerful stuff very powerful stuff it's it's definitely something to respect and not scale up too much because if stuff goes wrong with something like that it it can go high order and it can really cause a lot of damage so you know keep your wits about you all right guys well thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed the video if you like what you see on the channel please don't forget to thumbs up and subscribe and if you've been following for a while and you like what we're doing here please consider donating on patreon to help support the channel these chemicals off I'll come at a pretty hefty price tag so any support is is truly appreciated thank you so much and I'll see you next time a new shop manager here might look cool but don't let them fool you he can be a dick what's up buddy what you doing bud I'm sure will tell me to get on the lathe soon enough

Channel: ElementalMaker

Views: 86,624

Rating: 4.9355583 out of 5

Keywords: Making flash paper, Making nitrocellulose, nitrocellulose, flash cotton, making, gun cotton, flash, paper, nitration, cellulose nitrate

Id: AQSbj4dgTqI

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 06 2018