Comment by throw20102010 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by throw20102010 | Hacker News Reader

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I haven't tried it, but I would make a somewhat educated guess to say, no. Not that it can't be done, but that it probably isn't as easy to get the reaction going as regular thermite.

Thermite made from aluminum and iron can start with a child's firework sparkler, so it is pretty easy to make and use.

Titanium, while not a noble metal, is more resistant to heat and corrosion than aluminum and is just generally less reactive. You might call it "less un-noble" than aluminum. I expect that you'd have a much harder time getting thermite started using titanium. Just look at how much it took to get the titanium fire going on the Crew Dragon- a chunk of NTO had to slam into a valve at really high speed.

Edit: Since you piqued my curiosity, I decided to see if it had been done before. It has: http://developing-your-web-presence.blogspot.com/2008/10/on-... You replace iron oxide with titanium oxide (since titanium pieces oxidize only on a thin outer layer I expect you would need a very fine mesh), and keep the aluminum. This seems to need a little work but it has been done.

Thermite reactions only happen at extremely high temperatures. Your intuition based on room temperature chemistry is incorrect.

Sparklers (i.e. the fireworks) sometimes use titanium to make the sparks, but the primary thing you are igniting is a conventional oxidizer salt (nitrates) and an organic binder. Basically weak rocket fuel with some particles of flammable metal in it to throw off sparks. This is not a thermite reaction. The surface areas of the metals have a huge impact on practical flammability, hence why fine powders are easy to ignite. Iron is also quite flammable as a fine powder but I don't expect my skillet to spontaneously combust on my stove.

I think you're misreading the parent. They're implying you can start the reaction with a sparkler, not that the sparkler reaction is the same.

An ordinary sparkler does not generate enough heat to reliably bootstrap a thermite reaction. It will burn the aluminum component but a thermite reaction is a completely different animal.

Typical thermite bootstraps are three stage for the simple reason that chemistry that is easy to ignite usually does not generate enough thermal power to bootstrap a thermite reaction. A sparkler has a composition that is very similar to a primary stage, a mixture of oxidizer and organics plus a bit of metal for better thermal power (or sparkles, in the case of a sparkler). This is used to ignite the booster stage, which does deliver sufficient thermal power to bootstrap a thermite reaction but is difficult to ignite directly because it is essentially inert anywhere close to room temperature. Boosters are typically direct metal oxidation reactions e.g. aluminum and sulfur.

Useful thermite also tends to be fairly coarse mesh size, which makes it more difficult to ignite. You can trigger a thermite reaction with a fine mesh thermite mixture but that will mostly just give you sunburn and blind you for a day -- typically you want a controlled burn.

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