Boom! by Simon Quellen Field

Author:Simon Quellen Field
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chicago Review Press
Published: 2017-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

9

PENTAERYTHRITOL TETRANITRATE (PETN)

Bernhard Christian Gottfried Tollens was a German chemist. In 1891 he and a student, P. Wigand, created the compound pentaerythritol.

Pentaerythritol

Pentaerythritol is similar to glycerin, but instead of having three carbons and three OH groups, it has five carbons arranged symmetrically like a child’s toy jack, with four OH groups attached to the four terminal carbons.

In looking for a better explosive than nitroglycerin, it makes sense to start with something similar to glycerin but with more carbon, since nitroglycerin has a positive oxygen balance and the extra fuel would bring the balance closer to zero. Nitroglycerin is what chemists call an ester. An ester is a combination of an acid, such as nitric acid, and an alcohol, which is a carbon chain with an OH group attached. The acid, in this case HNO3 (nitric acid), loses its hydrogen to the OH group to make HOH (water, or H2O). The remaining part of the acid attaches to the carbon that used to have the OH group attached.

By slowly pouring pentaerythritol powder into an ice-cold mixture of concentrated sulfuric and nitric acids, four NO3 groups can be attached to the legs of the molecule. This is exactly what was done at the German munitions factory of Rheinisch-Westfälische Sprengstoff A.G. in Cologne, Germany, in 1894.

PETN is one of the most explosive compounds known. It is 1.66 times more explosive than TNT.

In 1912 the German government patented a better way to produce it, just in time for use in World War I.

PETN degrades more slowly than nitroglycerin or nitrocellulose but it is still less stable than TNT. It is less shock sensitive than nitroglycerin but more sensitive than TNT. For these reasons it is often mixed with TNT or other explosives, resulting in a mix that has the high brisance of PETN but is less sensitive and stores better.

PETN is the ingredient used in primer cord, an explosive string that is used to set off other explosive charges. Going by the name of primacord, or detcord, it is a plastic tube full of PETN. By connecting separately spaced charges with detcord, the extremely high detonation velocity of the PETN leads to near-simultaneous detonation of all the charges.

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