PEBBLE PROPELLANT

WARNING TO READERS
This publication contains depictions and descriptions of dangerous mixtures. The
information is based on the experience of the author using specific tools and
ingredients under specific conditions not necessarily described in the text. No
warranties are made. Readers are cautioned that they must form their own
opinion as to the application of anything found in this book.

INTRODUCTION:

Most of us have experimented with some kind of a combustible mixture when we

while a child. Most of them are Fuel Oxidizer mixture, the most common base
matter is KNO3, when heated alone it decompose into KNO2 and O, however the
process is very different when mix with other material.

Black powder:

The most well known is black powder, where 15parts of KNO 3 is mixed with 2 part
of sulfur and 3 part of Charcoal. When properly made it is very powerful, but most
home experimenter will not have access to the equipments are skills, things like
ball mill and properly made softwood charcoal. The most irritating property about
black powder is the need for charcoal. Charcoal whose composition varies over a
large range means the many uncertainties in mixing black powder. It is said the
softwood charred at 400°C with the retort method; apparently willow is the best
wood, followed by maple, apple, and beech and Grape vein. The mixing is also
very time-consuming and a ball mill is compulsory. The uncertainties with charcoal
stop the use of black powder in the underprivileged chemists. Even in the
professional world people attempted to replace Charcoal with phenolphthalein. In
commercial black powder the maker first ball mill all ingredients to dust, then they
mix it when it is damp and wheel mill it. After that it is dried into cakes then
broken down and pressed with huge machines to cakes again, this cake is then
broken in to granules and properly dried, now do you think you can reproduce
that? Alternatively if you are interested in the making of Black powder you can
have a look at “Black powder manufacturing, testing and optimizing” by Ian von
Maltitz.

Other Mixtures

Another common mix is Potassium Nitrate and common table sugar, there are
many advantages of this mix, it produce a large amount of smoke, which is
mainly, water vapor and fine suspended dust of Potassium Carbonate. The
mixture is cheap, easy to make and easy to use. It does not need proper ration
control, are crushing basically any crude mix will burn, but not very good. Through
experiment many have found out that this mixture works best at a ratio of 2
Nitrate to 1 Sugar, this mixture is good in amateur rockets. It is also said that an
addition of Iron Oxide to the mix can improve its burning speed; the author has
found out that an addition of about 1% of red dehydrated Iron oxide is the best
ratio; the addition can help with heat transfer and provide oxygen in the reaction.
Chlorates and Perchlorate based mixture are much better than the Nitrate based
ones. Chlorate can be synthesized in a cell with graphite electrodes with KCl or
NaCl, Perchlorate need lead dioxide or platinum anodes to work properly. However
Chlorate is very unstable and can be dangerous for the less skilled chemist.

Pebble propellant

The author have been experimenting with these things for a long time now, this
Pebble type is somewhat one of the best mixture for the under equipped chemist
of the kitchen. This mixture is dense, hard, fast burning, and closely resembles
the texture and shape of sand grains and pebbles of marble, that’s where the
name come from.

To the Left it shows a pellet of Pebble propellant next

to a 50c coin.

SAFETY FIRST
In the following document the manufacture procedure of the hazards PP (pebble
propellant) will be mentioned. As mention earlier the author carried out his
manufacture with tools and processes not necessarily mentioned below. You the
reader need to think throughout the reading and making of this to find your way
of doing it safety, although the author strongly recommend you to not do it at all.
This article is for educational purposes only, and the author will not take
responsibilities for your actions using this mixture. All experiment done at your
own risk.

PP is a rather dangerous mixture, the hazards of manufacturing will be mentioned

later, and here I will mention something about the end product. It is sensitive to
anything that a mixture of this natural can be sensitive to, statics, heat, dumb and
irresponsible person. This mixture is a low explosive capable of exploding when
the burn is confine. The mixture burn at a temperature that can ignite most of all
things that are ignitable, plastics, oil, flammable liquid, wood, paper, skin and etc.
The mixture burn and release a larger amount of Potassium carbonate and
potassium sulfate with water vapor. These can corrode most metals and are bad
for people’s health because of the potassium hydroxide formed.

Hope you enjoy this article

PROCESS OF MANUFACTURING:
Ingredients and Equipment

Potassium Nitrate, and will be abbreviated with KN

Table sugar, will be abbrev as SU

Sulfur

Iron Oxide red, abbrev with FeO

Containers, metal and plastic

Stirring Equipment

Heating source, electric skillet with thermal control, heating should be done with a
double boiler that contains oil or wax; this can effectively reduce the chance of
local hotspots

Blender or Coffee grinder

Scale

Safety clothing

SAFETY:

1. Small is beautiful, make small batch of this at once, or at least do the

dangerous parts in small batches. So if something goes critical it won’t be
devastating as it would be with large batch.

2. Protective cloth, things like fireproof coat, thick heat proof gloves and face
mask with good safety goggles. The author has had experience with
accident without protective clothes. He has suffered from bad burns on
both of his hands and eye lids, luckily his eye survived intact. Clothes like
synthetic material is no, as it will melt and catch or fire where cotton, wool
and leather can’t.

3. Ground yourself with ground to reduce statics, by wearing a static wrist

band or something.

4. Stay cautious and do not be over confidante, this is where you will kill
yourself. It takes one mistakes to kill you.

5. Have someone with you to save you, but remember when things happen
try not to use the emergency services; chemist can be deemed as terrorist
 and your house a bomb factory, the people will probably alert the police
and send bomb squad to clear your house while you bleed to death.

6. Think about the fallout of your action before attempting it, ask yourself
what if?

7. Be prepared; make sure you go through things thoroughly in your head

before attempting, that’s what brain is for.

Ingredients

KN can be obtain as a fertilizer, be rarely in SA, it can be bought from the

pharmacy but is expensive, the best bet is the technical grade at chemical supply
houses but the 50g from pharmacy will do fine. Other method is to obtain caustic
potash or lye, mix it with ammonium nitrate and heat until no ammonia develops.

SU can be bought at any supermarket

FeO can be made by a cell, make a dilute solution with salt to it add an anode of
Iron or steel and a cathode of any metal, like a copper sheet. Connect it across a
DC power supply; let it run for about 3 days then boil the electrolyte over a stove
until the product is as red as blood and very dry. Cool it down before use.

Sulfur can be obtained at pharmacies

Procedures

1. Weigh out about 63 parts of KN, 27 parts of SU, 10 parts of Sulfur and 1
parts of FeO and place them in separate containers.

2. Mix the SU, Sulfur and FeO in a blender or coffee grinder for about 5 – 10
min until it is reduced into a fine dust. If you use blender you need to know
that it must be dry and blender can trap particles in the bottom thread so
blender for a min, then pour mix into a bowl and unscrew the bottom, pour
the stuck particles back and blend again, this also prevents overheating.

3. Blend the KN in the blending machine after this, but be sure to clean it
properly. Use guide lines from last step. The Mix will be ready after 10 min
or so.

4. Mix the blended mixes by hand until a uniform color is obtained. Then it
should be mixed together. It is advisable to place a small amount of this
mix in the blending machine to test if any accident will happen or not.
When safe, add the mix in the blender and blend for 1 min.

5. Take the fine flour out of blender; it can be tested here to make sure
nothing goes wrong.
 6. Now this fine flour is extremely flammable and should be treated with
respect. The electric skillet deep fryer or double boiler has to be preheated
to about 120 to 130 degrees centigrade.

7. Place a test charge in the heated container over the heat source, observe
and learn about the process of mixing, do not stir and watch how it turns,
make sure it cannot ignite, if it did, lower the temperature, basically we
want a the sulfur to melt only.

8. Add the mix into container and stir, while heat. Stop heating periodically
and allow it to cool, this is the most dangerous step. The author has
suffered from this step, his heater was too hot.

9. When it is sticky and semi melted you can take this mix and dump it on a
metal surface, take this thing and let it settle out.

10. When it is hard particles size reduction can be done with a hammer.

Notes

Steps including the blending of all four components and the melting are
EXTREMELY DANGEROUS, it is highly recommended that the readers do not
undertake the process at home, the completion of these process requires a lot of
skills and common sense, it is advisable to test blend remotely with small
amounts outdoor with the operator at a well covered position, once safe it can be
done remotely but the author need to be covered if he want to live for any
reasonable length of period. The melting process is even more hazard, a pot of
overheated PP (Pebble propellant) will almost ignite all at once producing a huge
fireball at a magnitude well over the melting point of aluminum, and it will cause
second degree burn at a exposure of a fraction of a second, this too is
experienced by the author when he used a old faulty hotplate with no protective
measures, the batch was only 10g, but the author still suffered from second
degree burn on both of his hand and face. The other risk is associated with local
hot spots from the lack of stirring, when operating on a hotplate with fine flour of
PP, it is very likely for the powder to stick on the side of the container, and
however this will only develop if heated from a direct source, not an oil bath. It is
vital for beginners to try to master this step in small amounts before attempting
on making the big batches. PP is one of those things that are supposed to be
relatively safe but you can’t count on that, things will go wrong, be sure to think
thoroughly and think about the fallout before doing anything, do not rush at this,
or you shouldn’t be doing this at all. Know that sugar melt only slightly higher
than sulfur, and will decompose once it start to melt, so please time your melting
properly, caramel is no good for PP.

I thought I might mention about safety clothes here. Well, I took a white coat for
doctors, soaked in a solution of alum and ammonium sulfate (pharmacy and
fertilizer) dried then surface plated with a layer of silicon carbide sand paper. For
face protection take anything that can cover your face, like those terrorist mask
and soak it in the same solution, then sandpaper plate it like before and wore
under it a normal mask because the doping agent is irritant. Gloves are the most
important, in my opinion only wielders glove is safe but a wet cotton garden glove
under a latex glove under another cotton glove. It will also work.
STORAGE
PP is a mixture that can do bad damage; theoretically it is not that much of a fire
hazard because the flame is fast. However in bulk PP is very dangerous, the
mixture do not require air to combust and in bulk the heat produce is obviously
enough to just vaporize the water you through at it. It is not recommended to
store bulk of PP in your house or even better not at all, PP should be store far from
everything, moisture, statics, heat, properties and other, but it need to be close
enough so you have control over it and your brother can’t just pop in and
extinguish his cigarettes in the “sand”. It is also better to store them in a number
of smaller containers far away from each other to prevent big disaster.

USAGE
PP can be used as a substitute of black powder; it has superior mechanical
strength and density. It can be used in many applications where a hot flame is
needed to ignite something else. PP is rather hard to ignite, with a normal lighter
it would take a few second of heat to ignite, but with another pyrotechnical
mixture it is easily lighted. To improve its sensitivity it can be doped in a solution
of black powder and alcohol or just coated with fine charcoal. With a bit of careful
heating it can be used as grains for rocket, and it will make an efficient end
burner. The melted mix can be coated on bridge wires to make an effective
pyrogen capability of ignite a core burner instantaneously providing fast thrust
rise for the less gifted chemist will bad launch pads. The big pellets could be
mixed with busters HE to provide reliable ignition of fuel aerosol.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
“Black powder manufacturing, testing and optimizing” by Ian von Maltitz

“The chemistry of powder and explosive” by Tenney L Davis

“High Explosive and Propellant” by S Fordham