Nitrate, coloured smoke

[HeA]

Hi

For various reasons, getting potassium chlorate has become more and more difficult. The standard mix for coloured smoke uses chlorate. Does anybody know if you can make coloured smoke with potassium nitrate as the oxidiser?

[greenlight]

Potassium nitrate burns much too hot to produce colored smoke.

 

The dyes must be vaporized (not burnt) at a low temperature with a cool burning mixture which is why potassium chlorate is used. You can see the difference by the ignition temperatures:

 

KClO3/lactose = approx 195°C ignition temp

 

KNO3/lactose = approx 390°C ignition temp

[AussieBombTech]

Hi

For various reasons, getting potassium chlorate has become more and more difficult. The standard mix for coloured smoke uses chlorate. Does anybody know if you can make coloured smoke with potassium nitrate as the oxidiser?

This is his highly unlikely if not impossible. Nitrate burns too hot for the dye to release the colour. Even adding bicarbonate will not work. You have to use chlorate, lactose and organic dyes

[pyrojig]

There are nitrate color comps , just harder to impossible chems to obtain and highly toxic lead salts , mercury , and others that you probably would not want to breath... Hence the reason that these are not in common literature. White and yellow are the two safer common nitrate comps that are readily available . .

[Mumbles]

Ellern has a few colored smoke comps as well. Building off of what Pyrojig mentioned, they're generally inorganic smoke compositions and tend to be kind of nasty. Otherwise you're kind of restricted to white, black, and gray without chlorate/dyes.

[vtoselli]

I've wanted to make the smoke bomb featured in this video:

But the dyes are extremely expensive here where i live.
My question is: if i skip the dyes and use the proportion they provided in the video, will it burn a white smoke or will not ignite?
If someone have a better proportion using these ingridients and want to share with me, i'll gladly accept.
Thx in advance.

[davidh]

I believe you can use Ammonium Chloride as a "white dye".

[Arthur]

The sheer mass proportion of dye cools the flame and the heat used to vaporise the dye cools the reaction so messing with or removing the dye may simply not work -too fast? blow up? no smoke?

[vtoselli]

The sheer mass proportion of dye cools the flame and the heat used to vaporise the dye cools the reaction so messing with or removing the dye may simply not work -too fast? blow up? no smoke?

Thats what i was afraid of. Think i'll keep the basics with KNO3, sugar and wax. Worked pretty well for me. My only concern is that i use smoke bombs for airsoft games, and for safety reasons the one featured in the videos seems to be more safe. Thx very much.