Are chlorinated compounds inherently smokey?

[billysundays]

Do chlorine donor compounds in general put out alot of smoke when burned? Is it from the chlorine content itself? PVC sure did create alot of noxious smoke when I added it to the fire, and I'm trying to figure out if its because I put in too much, lowering the heat output of the fire, allowing more incomplete combustion products to escape, or if its just the nature of chlorine itself in a fire? I'm considering using chlorowax as my chlorine donor and I'm hoping its not as "smokey".

[OldMarine]

Where did you find chlorowax?

[NeighborJ]

Skylighter had some chlorowax on sale about a month ago, I stocked up, though I'm not sure what I'll use it for yet. I just wanted to get as much as I could before it became scarce.

 

I believe all the commonly available chlorine donors will be quite Smokey when used without an oxidizer. Heck they're Smokey enough with oxidizers but that may not be due to the donor.

 

Wax without chlorine is used in smoke comps, pvc is a plastic, so is saran and parlon...well, its rubber. Most other donors are pretty much unobtainium unless you know someone with an old stockpile.

[billysundays]

I ordered the chlorowax from Firefox at $11 a pound. Cheap-Chemicals.com is the only other source that I can find that has it at a not-so-cheap $18 a pound. Both are the Chlorez 700 powder kind. Firefox also has Hexachloroethane (89% chlorine).

 

So do you think its the chlorine content itself that produces the smoke? Seems so. Hexachloroethane has the highest chlorine content, and its preferred in military smoke compositions.

[NeighborJ]

I believe that all the substances used with the chlorine are smokey. I haven't used hexachloroethane or dechlorane so I can't speak on those.

[OldMarine]

I have dechlorane plus but have not burned any in a form other than stars in the air so can't attest to it's smoke production.

[Mumbles]

In my experience most chlorine donors tend to be somewhat smokey. They're mostly fire retardants, and generally don't want to burn and certainly not cleanly.

[PeteyPyro]

I ordered the chlorowax from Firefox at $11 a pound. Cheap-Chemicals.com is the only other source that I can find that has it at a not-so-cheap $18 a pound. Both are the Chlorez 700 powder kind. Firefox also has Hexachloroethane (89% chlorine).

 

So do you think its the chlorine content itself that produces the smoke? Seems so. Hexachloroethane has the highest chlorine content, and its preferred in military smoke compositions.

I only have a few pounds of hexachloroethane left from, I believe, India. It was in a 25Kg sack from Scottish, but I 'hear' that it's no longer being allowed into the USA for civilians. I guess is to nasty for the enviroment, as so many great Pyro chems are. <shrug>

[billysundays]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

 

I agree about hexachloroethane's toxicity, just mentioned it to point out Firefox has a notable inventory of some rather exotic compounds.

 

I guess, of course, I'll have to experiment with chlorowax once it arrives and figure out how much to use to strike a balance between effectiveness and smokiness. Also, a few days ago, I lit up my wood-gasifier firepit again, and this time I added the PVC to the ash collection tray beneath the fire pit to see if it would get heated enough to melt and release chlorine without being burned directly and produce smoke, and the results look promising, though not foolproof. For our bonfires every year, we make a modified version of a dakota firepit to keep smoke production low, so placing the chlorine donor at the bottom of the wood stack would work the same if that's what I decide to do.