
So Long TNT, There's a New Explosive in Town - kshatrea
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a21987787/tnt-replacement-bis-oxadiazole-los-alamos/
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gruturo
I'm surprised that this is being compared to TNT. I was (naively, maybe) under
the assumption that weapons moved away from TNT already since long time - to
HMX and RDX, mostly, which should be already 50-60 years old.

Also - at 8.18km/s detonation velocity, this thing isn't even so exciting.

Hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane has much better performance, higher density, a
cooler name :-), seems to be reasonably practical to produce/handle (at least
as far as high explosives go), and is a fantastic excuse to link to Derek
Lowe's eminently enjoyable "Things I won't work with" articles:
[http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/thi...](http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2011/11/11/things_i_wont_work_with_hexanitrohexaazaisowurtzitane)

~~~
Merad
This is mentioned in TFA:

> It's also not that explosive, owing to the fact that TNT doesn't have enough
> oxidizer to burn all its carbon and hydrogen fuel, which is why you see a
> black cloud of mostly carbon after TNT is detonated. So TNT is generally
> mixed with other chemicals, such as RDX to form an explosive mixture called
> Composition B that is found in many bombs.

~~~
gruturo
Yep, got that part. I'm just amazed that TNT, a compound dating back to 1863
(just googled it) is in active use 155 years later. Of course it works well
enough, but I'd imagine the military to go for the absolute most bang for the
buck (pun absolutely intended) and am surprised it ha[sd]n't happened yet.

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logfromblammo
Popular Mechanics is not great for people with more than the bare minimum
knowledge of chemistry. The new explosive is
bis(1,2,4-oxadiazole)bis(methylene)dinitrate:

    
    
          ONO2
         /
      H2C
         \
          C---O
         //    \
        N       N
         \    //
          \  //
            C
            |
            C
          //  \
         //    \
        N       N
         \    //
          O---C
               \
                CH2
               /
           O2NO
    

I propose the acronym "BODAMN" (Bis Oxa-Di-Azole Methylene Nitrate), as the
one most likely to catch on among those melt-casting it. Army folks love
pronounceable acronyms.

In the absence of sufficient oxygen, reaction products are likely to be

C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + 2 H2O + 6 CO

C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + H2O + H2 + CO2 + 5 CO

C6H4N6O8 --> 3 N2 + 2 H2 + 2 CO2 + 4 CO

That beats TNT, which produces between 1 and 3.5 moles of C (as soot) per mole
of TNT. With BODAMN's all-gaseous products, the hot CO and H2 can expand after
the initial detonation, and then react with O2 whenever they can find one.

With excess oxygen available, the hot, pressurized N2 might also form some NO
or NO2.

------
RickJWagner
Related fun fact: Dynamite was invented by Alfred Bernhard Nobel.

Nobel didn't want his legacy to be one of destruction, so he founded the Nobel
prizes that are still awarded today.

~~~
aidenn0
Of course Dynamite is now used almost exclusively for non-violent uses now in
any event, so perhaps that's a non-issue.

Even thought dynamite is more powerful than TNT, it's not castable, and is
_much_ more unstable, so TNT and other explosives have completely displaced
dynamite in the military.

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ryanmercer
Is TNT even widely used anymore? There's far more stable/safer to handle
explosives. I'd have assumed TNT was largely abandoned in the developed world.

~~~
mannykannot
I believe TNT is pretty stable. In his memoir "Target Ploesti", Leroy Newby
tells of an incident where B24s dropped their bombs if they were running out
of runway on takeoff - something they would not have got away with if the
bombs contained RDX rather than TNT.

It was a hot day, the planes were heavily loaded, and the first to go ran off
the runway and burst into flames. Newby's was next, and his pilot refused to
go; this was the compromise they worked out.

~~~
ryanmercer
Thanks for the book mention, I love stuff like that!

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voxadam
Los Alamos National Laboratory and the U.S. Army working on a replacement for
toxic TNT

[http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-
archive/2018/June/...](http://www.lanl.gov/discover/news-release-
archive/2018/June/0614-tnt-retirement.php)

------
angularcow
Not sure how "TNT, or trinitrotoluene, is a mixture of the seemingly innocent
elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen" made it past the editor. TNT
is a compound, not a mixture. And nitrogen isn't innocent, it's notorious for
being in tons of explosives.

~~~
flukus
> And nitrogen isn't innocent, it's notorious for being in tons of explosives.

It makes up ~80% of the atmosphere, it's easy to forgive someone for being
unaware of it's explosive potential.

> TNT is a compound, not a mixture

This is at best just needlessly pedantic. In this instance being correct would
probably lead to more people not understanding the article.

~~~
digi_owl
Yeah until i read up on explosives (and other lively substances, hello Derek
Lowe) my impression of nitrogen was that of it being the most benign of
atmospheric chemicals.

As i have come to understand it, nitrogen gets real frisky when you pair it up
with others that can't fill all its electron bonds. This then leaves it a hair
breath away from going back to pure nitrogen bonds, releasing a whole lot of
pent up energy in the process.

~~~
pwg
Yes, this is why nitrogen is a component of most explosives. While it will
form compounds it forms unstable compounds that easily come apart. And that
separation of the chemical bonds with nitrogen is what provides the immense
energy release that makes for an explosion.

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JackCh
What are they actually going to call it? Bis-isoxazole is a mouthful. If
people are afraid to talk about it for fear of mispronouncing it and looking
foolish, will it see commercial success?

~~~
kijin
The military loves cheeky shorthands and acronyms. They're really good at
backronyms, too. It won't take long for them to come up with something like
Bisox, oxaz, BIAX, BNT ("bomb, not TNT"), etc. Or maybe just the brand name of
whoever is selling it.

Soon Hollywood catches up, and you'll hear Mark Wahlberg yelling for the "B
round" in his next action movie.

~~~
dogma1138
The military will end up using composite explosives so they don’t call them by
their compound name. C4 is just an RDX mixed in a stabilizing polymer putty
(Semtex is the same with PETN added to the mix), the vast majority of
explosives used these days are “PBX” or Polymer Bonded Explosives so the
military will end up giving it some classification code which is easy to
remember and write down on supply orders like C10 or w/e.

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radisb
I love the TNT (the courier) ads that appear on the page (at least in my
browser). So much for the sophisticated AI.

