• Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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    5 months ago

    Yeah, it’s that sort of nasty reaction. Nitration is exothermic and its ratio depends on temperature, so all you need to get it exploding is to let the ice melt.

    • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      …I think we did it on a hotplate.

      Maybe we were using toluene as a solvent or something. It’s been quite a while.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        5 months ago

        You said that you only did the first nitration, right? You were probably using slightly less concentrated ingredients then. Doing it on a hotplate with oleum and fuming nitric (required for all three nitrations) is madness.