Monday, October 15, 2007

Fertiliser grade AN

Modern AN fertiliser with 27%N is made by dissolving a certain amount of dolomite and then neutralising the whole mass. Finnish patent says this will yield you totally stable AN, which it is, but as I have only 27%N AN grade - that is about 27/35=77% AN content only, the rest is dolomite. The positive point is that there is no sand, there are no crude particles.
When melted, the fertiliser is stable, clay-like substance, that behaves similar to molten clay.

First: what I did was to mix little 6-micron SiC powder, more ceric oxide and the fertiliser granules. The resulting powder was finer that I got usually, and I was able without much effort to grind it few times again. (note the resulting mix may contain only 62-70%AN only :( ) I took a sample and mixed with PS glue. The PS glue was obtained by dissolving foam polystyrene in a bit of solvent. I made it syrup thick. Added some powder and mixed (approx 80% powder, 20% PS glue?). The result was something with the look and feel of modelling clay. Even after drying it is not completely hard, you can do marks with nails.

Note this composition is useless as a rocket fuel, but when Mg powder added it may be a good candle.

Burn test:
What did burn were the isolated islands of AN (bubble and boil), but the thermal isolation caused by very high inert material loading of about 25-40% did not allow flame to heat the mass. The ceric oxide does not dissolve in molten AN (so it looks), unlike the ferric oxide which does dissolve in molten KNO3.

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