The Do-It-Yourself Gunpowder Cookbook by Don McLean

Author:Don McLean
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 0-87364-675-4
Publisher: Paladin Press
Published: 2016-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

SULFUR FROM SANTA CLAUS

Both sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide, of course, are soluble in water. If you have a little citric acid to add to the water, it will enhance things. If a solution of hydrogen sulfide alone is left exposed to the air, sulfur gradually forms and can be filtered out. Hydrogen sulfide can be produced by the destructive distillation of coal that contains sulfur (most does), or by putting hydrochloric acid (HCl) on metallic sulfides such as ferrous sulfide (FeS), which gives the reaction FeS+2HCl → FeCl2+H2S. In the event you do not have HCl, see below for other ways to generate H2S.

Bear in mind that hydrogen sulfide (yes, the one you made in high school for its rotten egg smell by heating sulfur and wax) is poisonous (ask any coal miner) and flammable. Always work with positive ventilation (a fan exhausting to the outside). Sulfurous acid (H2SO3), although not as active as sulfuric acid (H2SO4), can cause damage to clothes, eyes, and skin.

If our raw material is sulfide ore of some sort, the first thing to be done is concentrate the sulfides. Ore must be broken down to about the size of table sugar to do this. This may be the point when you consider leaving your musket on the rack and building a bow and arrow, as anybody who mills ore with no more than a hammer earns his pay. If all you have is a hammer or two rocks, then work on a plastic sheet or tarp to catch the flying pieces, and wear eye protection.

If you have a survival shop with tools, a chain mill can be built from a brake drum and salvaged components (see Chapter 8) that will come in handy for all the various milling operations. A concrete mixer with fist-sized hard river rocks (about 1/3 full of rocks, plus enough nut-size broken ore to fill the spaces between, and enough water to make a very soupy mix) will also serve as a noisy but effective improvised ball mill.

Once the ore is broken down to sugar size or finer, the sulfides must be removed from the gangue (the stuff in the host rock you don't want). You can do this with a hand pan, like you would pan out black sand concentrates and gold. Given a survival shop, you can improvise a flotation cell, which is used in industry to separate milled sulfides from ore and is amazingly efficient.

A flotation cell simply is a vessel with a violent agitator (I've seen them made from old-style washing machines) and a way of introducing air into the bottom of it. The sulfide ore, water, and kerosene (or diesel, or pine oil, or any of a hundred specific commercial flotation agents) are agitated with air. The oil and air form a froth with the sulfides, which floats to the top and is skimmed off. Rinse this foam and you will have fairly pure sulfides. Industry uses sophisticated, continuous-flow cells with reagents designed to float

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