Thank you to friend and fellow engineer, LW,
who directed me to this
enlightening and humorous commentary by Derek Lowe on the
Science Magazine blog site which was posted over a decade ago
on 26 February 2008.
In a brief essay entitled
"Sand Won't Save You This Time", Lowe
elucidates on the quirkiness of the compound
chlorine trifluoride.
A poisonous gas which condenses into a liquid at 11.5C, it is, to say
the least, a particularly reactive reagent.
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Derek Lowe, Science Magazine
The compound also a stronger oxidizing agent than oxygen itself, which also puts it into rare territory. That means that it can potentially go on to “burn” things that you would normally consider already burnt to hell and gone, and a practical consequence of that is that it’ll start roaring reactions with things like bricks and asbestos tile. It’s been used in the semiconductor industry to clean oxides off of surfaces, at which activity it no doubt excels.
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A
hypergolic, it will instantly and violently ignite just about
anything, without an ignition source, including glass, plexiglass,
asbestos, water, fabrics, concrete and gas masks.
During such reactions it will often violently explode.
Exposure to larger amounts of it, as a gas or liquid, ignites living tissue.
Throw sand on it - a sure way of putting out a lot of fires - and the sand
will catch on fire.
Douse it with water and not only do you get a violent reaction but
clouds of hydrofluoric and hydrochloric acid.
Derek Lowe in his essay also cites a passage from the book
"Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants" by
John Drury Clark, who as an engineer developed liquid propellants
at the Naval Air Rocket Test Station in New Jersey between 1949
and 1970 and who had first hand experience with this stuff.
The blog is worth reading for the quote from Clark alone.
Derek Lowe blog on chlorine trifluoride here :-
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipelin..._you_this_time
Wikipedia page on chlorine trifluoride here :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine_trifluoride
Wikipedia page on rocket fuel engineer, chemist and science fiction writer
John Drury Clark here :-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Drury_Clark
The book ""Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants"
now in print again and available on Amazon here :-
https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-info.../dp/0813507251
A scanned PDF archive (copyright violation) of the 1972 book here :-
https://library.sciencemadness.org/l...s/ignition.pdf
YouTube video (1m41s) from 2012 made by French scientists
demonstrating what happens when chlorine triflouride comes into
contact with most things you would hope would protect you in a lab, like
plexiglass and gas masks :-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4l56AfUTnQ