So Long TNT, There's a New Explosive in Town | Hacker News Reader

So Long TNT, There's a New Explosive in Town

popularmechanics.com

91 pointskshatrea48 comments

I'm surprised that this is being compared to TNT. I was (naively, maybe) under the assumption that weapons moved away from TNT already since long time - to HMX and RDX, mostly, which should be already 50-60 years old.

Also - at 8.18km/s detonation velocity, this thing isn't even so exciting.

Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane has much better performance, higher density, a cooler name :-), seems to be reasonably practical to produce/handle (at least as far as high explosives go), and is a fantastic excuse to link to Derek Lowe's eminently enjoyable "Things I won't work with" articles: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/thi...

Have you looked at what environmental impact a TNT / HMX plant has? Lots of environmental contaminants.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) has declared TNT a pollutant whose removal is priority.

... This seems like a much safer organic compound.

This is mentioned in TFA:

> It's also not that explosive, owing to the fact that TNT doesn't have enough oxidizer to burn all its carbon and hydrogen fuel, which is why you see a black cloud of mostly carbon after TNT is detonated. So TNT is generally mixed with other chemicals, such as RDX to form an explosive mixture called Composition B that is found in many bombs.

Yep, got that part. I'm just amazed that TNT, a compound dating back to 1863 (just googled it) is in active use 155 years later. Of course it works well enough, but I'd imagine the military to go for the absolute most bang for the buck (pun absolutely intended) and am surprised it ha[sd]n't happened yet.

Popular Mechanics is not great for people with more than the bare minimum knowledge of chemistry. The new explosive is bis(1,2,4-oxadiazole)bis(methylene)dinitrate:

      ONO2
     /
  H2C
     \
      C---O
     //    \
    N       N
     \    //
      \  //
        C
        |
        C
      //  \
     //    \
    N       N
     \    //
      O---C
           \
            CH2
           /
       O2NO

I propose the acronym "BODAMN" (Bis Oxa-Di-Azole Methylene Nitrate), as the one most likely to catch on among those melt-casting it. Army folks love pronounceable acronyms.

In the absence of sufficient oxygen, reaction products are likely to be

C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + 2 H2O + 6 CO

C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + H2O + H2 + CO2 + 5 CO

C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + 2 H2 + 2 CO2 + 4 CO

That beats TNT, which produces between 1 and 3.5 moles of C (as soot) per mole of TNT. With BODAMN's all-gaseous products, the hot CO and H2 can expand after the initial detonation, and then react with O2 whenever they can find one.

With excess oxygen available, the hot, pressurized N2 might also form some NO or NO2.

Related fun fact: Dynamite was invented by Alfred Bernhard Nobel.

Nobel didn't want his legacy to be one of destruction, so he founded the Nobel prizes that are still awarded today.

Of course Dynamite is now used almost exclusively for non-violent uses now in any event, so perhaps that's a non-issue.

Even thought dynamite is more powerful than TNT, it's not castable, and is much more unstable, so TNT and other explosives have completely displaced dynamite in the military.

Is TNT even widely used anymore? There's far more stable/safer to handle explosives. I'd have assumed TNT was largely abandoned in the developed world.

I believe TNT is pretty stable. In his memoir "Target Ploesti", Leroy Newby tells of an incident where B24s dropped their bombs if they were running out of runway on takeoff - something they would not have got away with if the bombs contained RDX rather than TNT.

It was a hot day, the planes were heavily loaded, and the first to go ran off the runway and burst into flames. Newby's was next, and his pilot refused to go; this was the compromise they worked out.

Thanks for the book mention, I love stuff like that!

TNT is still used for military explosives primarily because it's A) pretty darn powerful and B) one of the few explosives that works well with molten casting, the latter is especially important for ease of manufacturing and more importantly when you need a very specific explosive geometry for things like shape charges, fragmenting munitions and nuclear warheads.

But it depends on the application, RDX and PETN are often uses for demolition, mines and such applications because they can be easily stabilized in a polymer, however that also makes their end PBX form much less powerful.

Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Army working on a replacement for toxic TNT

http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-archive/2018/June/...

Not sure how "TNT, or trinitrotoluene, is a mixture of the seemingly innocent elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen" made it past the editor. TNT is a compound, not a mixture. And nitrogen isn't innocent, it's notorious for being in tons of explosives.

However, most people's encounters with nitrogen on a day-to-day basis involve the more or less inert nitrogen molecules making up the vast majority of the Earth's atmosphere, so it is seemingly innocent unless you know about how when you start compounding it with other things it gets all excited.

Or you are old enough to remember the first WTC terrorist attack in the 90s where they had a van full of nitrogen fertilizer.

Nitrogen goes boom, like the most basic bomb is fuel/oil+fertilizer this should be pretty common knowledge especially considering how common were fertilizer bombs in the US.

> the most basic bomb is fuel/oil+fertilizer this should be pretty common knowledge especially considering how common were fertilizer bombs in the US.

In what context would more than 40% of Americans, people who grew up in a society were "and now I'm on a list" is a common phrase, have learned about the means of manufacturing bombs?

What percentage of people do you think have even heard of Fritz Haber?

How about the context of watching the nightly news where it's common to add that the explosion was a home made fertiliser bomb to a report of some amateur terrorist? No need of knowing any additional process, or if there even is any, or have heard of Fritz Haber and his discoveries.

Or just watching a whole selection of Hollywood movies where sacks labelled "fertiliser" are loaded into the van along with an LED alarm clock and detonator. :)

This still assumes most people are aware of nitrogen's role in fertilizer, ammonia (possibly), etc.

By being exposed to the news? https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fertilizer+bomb&num=100&ne...

And add to that the plethora of TV shoes and movies that specifically use "fertilizer bombs" as plot devices.

Most people

1) wouldn't google that, and

2) wouldn't immediately connect fertilizer to nitrogen or realize from the phrase that nitrogen is one of the key components.

People don’t need to google it was just to show that fertilizer bomb is a common phrase on the news you can also add nitrogen and bombs and get the same results.

News, movies and tv shows covered nitrogen and fertilizer bombs extensively since essentially all the bomb related terrorist attacks in the US used these.

And again this isn’t about most people this is about a columnist for Popular Mechanics and pop-sci publication they should know better and if they don’t they at least should do research.

Except that the news always covers it as a "fertilizer bomb" or "fuel oil and fertilizer bomb" without ever going into the details that nitrogen is one of the elements that has a significant play in the explosiveness of the "fertilizer bomb".

And the vast majority of those watching/reading the news, and seeing "fertilizer bomb" as the "name" are not chemists and have zero chemistry background, and therefore are not at all equipped to make the connection that it is the nitrogen in the fertilizer that provides much of the explosive punch of the "fertilizer bomb". At best all they will ever learn is that "fuel oil and fertilizer" can be used to make a bomb, without ever understanding why this combination is explosive.

> And nitrogen isn't innocent, it's notorious for being in tons of explosives.

It makes up ~80% of the atmosphere, it's easy to forgive someone for being unaware of it's explosive potential.

> TNT is a compound, not a mixture

This is at best just needlessly pedantic. In this instance being correct would probably lead to more people not understanding the article.

Maybe that person shouldn’t write for popular mechanics then? This isn’t about Joe Average this is about someone who’s their job is to do research and write compelling stories.

And there is nothing pedantic about mixture vs compound a compound has chemical bonds which is what allows the explosion to occur as the breakage of those bonds is what releases the energy.

And as far as explosives go then a mixture again has a very specific meaning it means that there is an external oxidizer or a secondary explosive involved which changes the characteristics of the explosives considerably.

Yeah until i read up on explosives (and other lively substances, hello Derek Lowe) my impression of nitrogen was that of it being the most benign of atmospheric chemicals.

As i have come to understand it, nitrogen gets real frisky when you pair it up with others that can't fill all its electron bonds. This then leaves it a hair breath away from going back to pure nitrogen bonds, releasing a whole lot of pent up energy in the process.

Yes, this is why nitrogen is a component of most explosives. While it will form compounds it forms unstable compounds that easily come apart. And that separation of the chemical bonds with nitrogen is what provides the immense energy release that makes for an explosion.

> This is at best just needlessly pedantic.

I disagree.

An article with chemical formulae, discussing melting vs combustion temperatures, ratios of elements within the compound correlating to explosive effects... and they muddle mixture with compound - this is needlessly lax terminology choice.

I don't think the number of 'people not understanding the article' would decrease if they'd used the right word there.

Note that the parent said "made it past the editor."

Being pedantic is the job of an editor. And, yes, explaining things correctly is hard, but doing so is the entire value proposition of a technical publication aimed at laymen.

That said, PM did say "seemingly innocent" so that part was entirely reasonable.

I don’t think your second criticism is fair. Air is mostly nitrogen. Alone it is innocuous.

The fact that it becomes dangerous when processed with other elements is the whole point of the sentence. Your criticism boils down to: “I already knew that.”

Air is mostly nitrogen. Alone it is innocuous.

But only because in air nitrogen has already formed molecules of two nitrogen atom. I would guess, it would not be a pleasant experience to be exposed to atomic nitrogen if this were possible. This contrast between nitrogen gas and other substances containing nitrogen atoms really makes no sense, there is just no relationship between the properties of elements and the properties of compound containing those elements, at the very least not in general.

The fact that it becomes dangerous when processed with other elements is the whole point of the sentence.

TNT is not directly made from nitrogen but from toluene and nitric acid which are both not innocuous and the later is unlike nitrogen gas and TNT. But it boils down to the point from before, in chemistry it makes not really sense to relate the properties of what goes into a reaction and what comes out. It might cause just minor changes in the properties but it might also change the character completely. And you can also arrive at the same compound via different routes involving different precursors with different properties. Arbitrarily picking some and comparing them to the product is not meaningful most of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Why all the hate nitrogen? Oxygen, that stuff is dangerous.

Yes, FOOF!

http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2010/02/23/thi...

What are they actually going to call it? Bis-isoxazole is a mouthful. If people are afraid to talk about it for fear of mispronouncing it and looking foolish, will it see commercial success?

It's not like it's gonna be sold in supermarkets. So a catchy name while helpful isn't an issue here.

I dunno, I'd buy it. Best fireworks ever.

The military loves cheeky shorthands and acronyms. They're really good at backronyms, too. It won't take long for them to come up with something like Bisox, oxaz, BIAX, BNT ("bomb, not TNT"), etc. Or maybe just the brand name of whoever is selling it.

Soon Hollywood catches up, and you'll hear Mark Wahlberg yelling for the "B round" in his next action movie.

> BNT ("bomb, not TNT")

I think BNT should stand for “BNT is Not TNT”

The military will end up using composite explosives so they don’t call them by their compound name. C4 is just an RDX mixed in a stabilizing polymer putty (Semtex is the same with PETN added to the mix), the vast majority of explosives used these days are “PBX” or Polymer Bonded Explosives so the military will end up giving it some classification code which is easy to remember and write down on supply orders like C10 or w/e.

> BNT

Imagine saying this in a noisy environment to a stressed artillery officer who is hard-of-hearing. How do you distinguish between "bee-en-tee" and "tee-en-tee"? If you're going to spell out "bravo November tango", then you'll probably want a different name.

If you go for cheeky, pick BADAZ.

The compound is Bis-oxadiazole; Bis-isoxazole was an earlier prototype compound.

I'd suggest BODAZ or OxAz.

BXD

Bisso maybe.

Boomystuff

Bix-Z

I love the TNT (the courier) ads that appear on the page (at least in my browser). So much for the sophisticated AI.

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