PVC cement glue

[WindowLicka]

I've read in several places how PVC cement glue is mainly PVC with a few other chemicals (cyclohexanone, THF, acetone) but mainly being PVC resin. It's been mentioned that this could be a OTC source for a chlorine donor and this intrigues me into asking those who know better than I, if this is true and if just drying out the glue and powdering it is sufficient or does the PVC need to be isolated from the rest of the ingredients? Edited May 15, 2016 by WindowLicka

[AzoMittle]

Well, let me ask you this: why do you want to? Also, what are you using this in? (Give us the formula if you have one.)

 

Quality, powdered PVC can already be purchased by the pound cheaper than even a small amount of PVC glue which contains only a fraction of PVC and remainder being solvents, stabilizers, and inert ingredients that you don't want anyways. Oh, and before someone asks, no, you cannot simply grind up PVC piping.

 

PVC is $5 per pound: http://www.hobbychemicalsupply.com/p/

Parlon (another good chlorine donor) is $9/lb.

 

http://www.skylighter.com/mall/chemicals.asp?Sort=P

PVC: $8.40/lb

Parlon: $11.96/lb

 

This list isn't comprehensive and the chemicals are NOT interchangeable but here are some other chlorine/fluorine containing compounds. I'm posting it just to show you the amount of options you have that don't include trying to isolate PVC from glue. I have at least one formula using each that I can post if you want.

1. Sculpy Clay
2. PVC
3. PVA
4. PVB
5. Parlon
6. Chlorowax
7. Dechlorane
8. HCB
9. HCE
10. Saran
11. Chloreze
12. Tetrachloromethane
13. Ammonium Chloride
14. Tin Chloride
15. Barium Chloride
16. Copper Chloride
17. Copper Chloride Dihydrate
18. Copper Ammonium Chloride
19. Cryolite
20. Calcium Fluoride
21. Lead Chloride
22. Calomel
23. Potassium Perchlorate
24. Ammonium Perchlorate
25. Barium Perchlorate
26. Potassium Chlorate
27. Strontium Chlorate
28. Barium Chlorate
29. Sodium Chlorate
30. Copper Chlorate
    

[WindowLicka]

Awesome list of chlorine/fluorine containing chemicals. I wonder how many of them give it up to enrich and deepen the compositions color. Thanks for the links to the stores that sell theses chemicals. I only have experience with pyrochemicalsource.com's stuff but if you ask me hobby and pyro both either use the same site design or they know each other. They both do have the chemical in question and other donor chemicals(i.e.;parlor,Saran). But that means I don't get to further my pyrotechnic knowledge if I take the easy way out and buy what I've already have (in other forms) all the time like a good consumer. It also completely sidesteps the question asked and in return throws one at me to boot.

 

Blue strobe rocket propellant:

Ammonium perchlorate - 63

Silicone II - 22

Copper(II)oxide - 10

PVC - 5

 

But the composition that perked my interest more was one for Bengal fire.

 

Barium nitrate - 80

PVC - 10

Red gum - 10

 

There are many others but these two are the most interesting to me as of now.

Back to the topic at hand,

"like Saran and parlon, PVC is a polymeric chlorine donor and fuel. It can be used in powder form or as a solution with THF".

Seems to me that the cement I'm asking about has THF and concentrated PVC resin. Plus the cyclohexanone and acetone.

The author who wrote the above quote is under the impression PVC glue contains an adequate amount of Concentrated PVC, not a fraction mixed with useless solvents. I only mention this to see if any of the members here have experience with this subject.

I know today I can order up as much PVC powder as I want in pure form...by the pound as was mentioned. But what about 20 years from now after some hypothetical collapse of the world economy and end of global internet communications? What then?If all I find myself with is PVC glue bought from the last hardware store around several years earlier and for some reason in this terrible apocalypse scenario I find my greens lacking big time? What then?

Why in such a situation I'd be making display pyrotechnics is not a point we need to highlight or explore.

But I come at you APC members with an honest question and seeing how there isn't an 'introduce/first post' section to the forum, I would like to extend my greeting and hope I'm received in a welcoming manner as I am an ameture pyrotechnic enthusiast. So I should fit in somewhere around this place.

Also by all means if you feel this subject has no worth and is beneath the caliber of information circulating this forum...please pm me and tell me in private and lock this thread.

Thanks,

JR.

[WindowLicka]

And you read my mind.

 

Can I just grind up a few feet of the tubing PVC from my local Home Depot? was the next question I had for this thread....

But seriously, does the other stuff in there (cyclohexanone) wash out or counter what the PVC is doing? It's probably safe to say it doesn't help it much. Hmmmm.

[AzoMittle]

Oh hey, sorry but I guess I didn't make myself clear. I wasn't trying to disparage you, if you want to try to isolate PVC from PVC glue then more power to you, what I meant is that it won't be practical or have nearly as good results as simply buying PVC.

 

The PVC piping has been discussed before, you can google it, but again the short answer is no. Just like how you can't cut up 'saran plastic wrap' to make saran, or can't cut up aluminum foil to make aluminum.

 

If you really want to get into the weird experimental stuff, I'm all for it but you got to realize it is exactly that 'weird experimental stuff' and that it probably won't work 99% of the time. Because you're a new member I'm trying to nudge you towards getting your compositions to work at all first, work well next, and then you start messing with things like PVC glue. There are already so many things that can go wrong or influence it that the last thing you need is a large unknown factor like cyclahexanone or THF.

 

Also, THF isn't the solvent you want, and PVC isn't generally a binder. Look at your compositions and find the binder, in the case of the blue strobe your binder is the GE Silicon II epoxy, for the bengal it is the red gum. Google solvents for red gum.

[dagabu]

Yes, you can use PVC glue in compositions but at the risk of adverse colors etc.

 

I cant find it (Mum, whats the google coding for an APC search?) using this search engine but there was a robust conversation some years back about doing this and I made a blue strobe using PVC glue and it worked just fine in that mix.

 

YMMV...

[schroedinger]

Well you really shouldn't worry to much about what is in the future now if internet brakes down. If that happens, fireworks are the least of your concerns. Also if you really wonder about that, for the price of pvc now you can rather stockpile it now, then wait, that will be a lot cheaper. The pvc glue i know had abou4 12% solid content, where i can't say how much of the 12% is pvc. Properbly also dependss on the brand.

[dagabu]

Yes, there are several different grades and the content is rather low but if you have a half can and the dauber no longer reaches the bottom, pyros are going to esperiment!!

[FlaMtnBkr]

For anyone that hasn't come across an old can of PVC cement and found all the solvent evaporated, there is a very small amount of solids in the bottom. I imagine you would be lucky to get a few dozen grams from a full can. Though it is a clear resin so it probably doesn't have too many impurities.

 

From what I remember PVC pipe has about 90% PVC and about 10% fillers. And a large portion is calcium carbonate to make the pipe white and opaque. So in a formula that you add 10% PVC chlorine donor, you would be adding about 1% calcium carbonate. That isn't a terrible amount but probably enough to ruin some colors especially blue though you may get a serviceable purple. Green would also probably be more lime green to yellow-orange. But you could probably make a nice red, and orange, and a decent yellow, purple, and maybe lime green. This is all speculation though based on internet hearsay about the contents of PVC pipe.

 

I imagine a colored PVC pipe would be the same thing but with a bit of dye. Though there is a chance it may contain something besides the calcium carbonate?

 

One thing it probably would work well for are some smoke compositions that contain a chlorine donor. Such as HC smoke. I don't know why HCE is always used as a chlorine donor unless it just works the absolute best and became what the military spec'd in their smoke generators. But I have made a similar comp that used mainly PVC for the chlorine and it pumped out tons of smoke. I would have to check my notes to see exactly what it contained.

 

As I said, a bit of speculation that might help if you just want to experiment. Figuring out how to turn rigid pipe into a fine powder will be your problem. Though in the newbie section there was a recent 'coarse aluminum' thread that I suggested something that would probably work. It was poo-poo'd but the amount of impurities introduced should be relatively small. And if you used an aluminum oxide grit you would know what the impurity is, and in the case of aluminum, it would already be present.

 

Edit: autocorrect made an incorrect

Edited May 16, 2016 by FlaMtnBkr

[dagabu]

I primarily was using it to coat black match against the weather. Uber-Fail!

[schroedinger]

FlaMtnBkr the chlorine donor in HC smoke formulas is used to produce HCl. The actual "smoke" in these is not solids dispersed in air, like with KNO3/Sugar, it is produced setting free acid vapors, with react with the humidity of the air. Same with smokes containing chlorosulfuric acid or military smokes on the base of phosphorus. Edited May 17, 2016 by schroedinger

[MrB]

(Mum, whats the google coding for an APC search?)

 

Dad here. I think your looking for "site:amateurpyro.com" son.

 

Joking, might bite me in the rear end, if that wasn't the google coding Dagabu was after.

B!

[dagabu]

LOL! No, that WAS funny!!

[FlaMtnBkr]

FlaMtnBkr the chlorine donor in HC smoke formulas is used to produce HCl. The actual "smoke" in these is not solids dispersed in air, like with KNO3/Sugar, it is produced setting free acid vapors, with react with the humidity of the air. Same with smokes containing chlorosulfuric acid or military smokes on the base of phosphorus.

Actually it's a chlorine donor to make zinc chloride which is the main screening agent.

 

How about you go play with your cat and stop following me around trying to find something to argue about. You annoy half the other people here and now you're annoying me.

 

Edit: even if it was making HCl, where exactly do you think the chlorine comes from? It is also still a particulate doing the obscuring or it wouldn't do much would it.

Edited May 17, 2016 by FlaMtnBkr

[WindowLicka]

Well this has been quite interesting and has actually made me lose total interest in PVC glue. I guess one needs only decide what one wants to accomplish with such a substitution like using glue over powder or better yet parlon. $9.00 a lb. won't kill me it's the waiting part that gets at me. That and the $16+ for shipping makes this an expense that best pay off on the 4th when my colors better WOW! my little guys.

I do appreciate the kind way in which you laid out the facts and called experimenting with glue for what it is... an experiment not likely to produce the kind of results worth the effort.

At least that's what I took from a portion of this thread.

Thanks for the help and since y'all have some experience with these chemicals as donors for richer colors...

 

Which chlorine donor is best with reds?

Greens?

Blues?

Ect?

 

If you have a minute and would like to answer I'd be grateful. thanks

Edited May 18, 2016 by WindowLicka

[Mumbles]

That is actually a rather difficult question to answer. My preference lies with saran in most cases. It burns cleanly and is easy to use. It is however getting a little harder to find. Parlon can have coarse bits depending on the source. It burns slower in my experience, though that can be helpful for blues. It also has a tendency to leave ash or cinder, which can interfere with optimum color purity. Don't get me wrong, I like parlon and use it quite a bit, it just has its own issues. I rarely use PVC mostly due to handling properties. The PVC I have is extremely staticy, and just a pain to use.

 

Preferences aside, I still use Parlon most frequently. This is simply because the formulas I like the most all tend to use it. A 50:50 blend of parlon and saran is actually really nice. It seems to help with the ash and debris from 100% parlon.

[Mike]

FlaMtnBkr that sounds like you have some experience with this type of smokes. Do you mind to share that pvc smoke formula? Also i can't get any of the perchlorinated agents, do you know if it also works with chloroforme?

[FlaMtnBkr]

I will look thru my notes and see if I can find the formula I finally came up with though it's been a few years back and may take a bit. It's based on HC smoke though and basically contained zinc oxide, some aluminum powder, PVC, and some oxidizer to help it burn. And maybe a little of something else like ammonium chloride to add more chlorine to combine with the zinc and which any extra will produce smoke on it's own.

 

For smoke, a few percent of impurities from the PVC shouldn't make much of a difference. When trying to make a colored flame it can have an effect especially if the impurity can produce a color of it's own like calcium carbonate. So PVC pipe can probably work fairly well in a smoke if you can get it into a powder. I would actually probably use CPVC pipe if you were to try as it has a higher percentage of chlorine. I have actually seen a camp fire colorant product that you throw the whole box in the fire. I opened it out of curiosity and it contained a piece of scrap copper pipe and a piece of PVC pipe and another box with a piece of garden hose that I assume was mainly PVC and they made blue-green flames for a while so it can do something.

 

And what country are you located? I imagine a chlorinated product is available if you look hard enough and maybe someone can point you in the right direction.

 

Edit: I think chloroform is a liquid and probably wouldn't work because of that. At least when I've seen it in my dad's lab it was a liquid in a jar.

 

Edit 2: I think there are some smokes that use a combination of liquids though I don't know if they have any practical use beyond a science/chemistry demonstration. I think hydrochloric acid and ammonia can make an ammonium chloride smoke. I imagine they need to be heated some to get enough molecules into the gas phase. Chloroform might do something similar depending on how tight it holds it's chlorine. You could maybe make smoke. That or make everyone around pass out! >:°)

Edited May 23, 2016 by FlaMtnBkr

[FlaMtnBkr]

HC smokes by far make the most smoke per mass of the burning composition and is why it's used by the US military during combat. But it can be toxic to breath which is why they now have a different mix used for practice that is based on TPA, terephthalic acid. If a suitable chlorine donor isn't available, you might just want to try the 'legendary' smoke mix. It's just a mix of potassium nitrate and sugar which works ok by itself, with the addition of wax which is melted and vaporized into microscopic droplets of wax and actually makes an impressive amount of smoke.

 

Fog machines used in clubs and at parties are based on a similar principal. Fog juice is a mixture of glycerin and water which is heated, vaporized, and then condenses into droplets that makes the fog. That's why it usually comes out in spurts, because the heating element needs time to reheat so it's hot enough to vaporize the next puff of fog.

 

The military also uses similar devices to generate smoke and they run an engine to make heat and then vaporize straight oil that produces a screening effect. Don't know if they are still used but they were back in the world wars.

[schroedinger]

Very good summary FlaMtnBkr.

With the HC smoke a couple accidents happened during the use by the military. To counter these problems, titanium dioxide is sbstituted in for zink oxide. This smoke is considerable less toxic then the zink version and also has the advantage that it also absorbs i the IR spectra (heat rays).

But don't think this smoke is non toxic.

 

Also still in use are phosphorus smokes, which produce phosphorus pentoxide. This hydrolysis with the moisture in the air to form phosphoric acid smoke.

Edited May 23, 2016 by schroedinger

[Mumbles]

...

 

Also still in use are phosphorus smokes, which produce phosphorus pentoxide. This hydrolysis with the moisture in the air to form phosphorus acid smoke.

 

 

I think you mean phosphoric acid. Spelling matters here.

[schroedinger]

Yes of course, H3PO4, damm auto correct. Else you would need P4O6.

[FelixLiu]

Yes, there are several different grades and the content is rather low but if you have a half can and the dauber no longer reaches the bottom, pyros are going to esperiment!!

[WindowLicka]

I see these references to HC smoke and think that this can't be hydrogen chloride shortened, can/is it?

Because for general safety purposes this shouldn't even be considered for the generation of smoke. Unless rusting all your metals and possibally causing extreme health problems is alright just to make some pyro smoke.

I know it must be an acronym for something other than hydrogen chloride.

[Mumbles]

Mostly no. HC smokes refer to ones based on hexachloroethane (HCE). They do however produce some HCl vapor in the smoke. They're usually based on HCE and either zinc or zinc oxide. There are also some magnesium and aromatic hydrocarbon based black versions as well.