On Mon, 17 Mar 2008, Brian B. Riley wrote:

> Thermite is an an exchange reaction. The oxygen comes from the mix.
> 
> FE2O3 + 2Al  gives  Al2O3 + 2Fe + copious  amounts of heat.
> 
> It requires a lot of heat to get started, usually ignited with a  
> magnesium ribbon.
> 
> It was concocted to do field welds on railroad rails and was also  
> found to be very handy for sabotage. The reaction produces molten  
> iron, it doesn't burn through anything,   its just melts it. I had  
> thermite grenades taped to the bipod/tripod legs of all my machine  
> guns and mortars in Nam for quick access to destroy the weapon if we  
> ever got overrun, which, fortunately, I never had to do. I did once  
> raid a small NVA base camp and the thermite did a great job when left  
> on the engine blocks of some old French trucks they had.
> 
> I have no experience specifically with thermite inside a safe, but my  
> feeling is that  with the containment, the temps would get up to  
> several thousand degrees long before it melted through the steel  
> walls. There's no such thing as 'milder thermite' you would just have  
> to limit the amount or possibly contaminate the mix with something  
> inert like sand to slow it down..
> 
> cheers ... BBR


Hi Brian,

I had a feeling thermite grenades weren't straight forward Fe/Al thermite. 
I did some digging and found (wikipedia) that they contain a large amount 
of Barium Nitrate and also some sulphur.

I think you could only go so far with an inert contaminant before it 
actually snuffs out the reaction. Perhaps using a smaller amount of 
thermite in a large thick iron shell would be better. Melting the shell 
would absorb heat from the thermite.

Regards
Sergio
-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist