Gage's next debate

chrismohr · Apr 15, 2011

More sulfidized steel questions to prepare for debate epilogue

A recent post from Sunstealer created these questions for me. As you can see, I am slow to learn chemical matters, and hope you'll bear with me as I re-ask some of these questions:

Thermite melts other metals due to the high heat of reaction not by solid state diffusion of a gas into the parent metal which was observed due to sulphides being found below the solid un-melted surface of the steel. Thermite can't do that. UNDERSTOOD.

Secondly no aluminium in the photomicrograph means no thermite. DO YOU MEAN NO ALUMINUM OR NO ALUMINUM OXIDE? ALSO, NO ALUMINUM AT ALL OR NO ALUMINUM IN THE RED-GRAY MICROCHIPS OF PAINT/"THERMITES?"

You can't conclude anything else but high temperature corrosion via sulphidation, oxidation, decarburisation leading to a liquid Fe-O-S causing inter-granular attack. UNDERSTOOD. WOULD KEVIN RYAN AGREE WITH THE PRESENCE OF Fe-O-S AND JUST ASSERT IT CAME INTO BEING VIA THERMATE? ALSO IS IT TRUE THAT 4500 DEGREE THERMATE TEMPERATURES WOULD BREAK DOWN THE Fe-O-S CHEMICAL STRUCTURE ENTIRELY, AS I THINK SOMEONE ELSE ON THIS THREAD ASSERTED?

Where is the aluminium in the corroded steel in the paper you quote? Where is the Sulphur in the Harrit et al paper? It's not there - therefore no thermite/thermate. SOMEHOW I THOUGH HARRIT ET ALL DID FIND SULPHUR SOMEWHERE IN THE DUST; AGAIN DO YOU MEAN IN THE RED/GRAY CHIPS NONE WAS FOUND?

OTHER QUESTIONS: Ryan Mackey asserted in his white paper that we don't really know how the sulfidized steel was created in the first place. Do you agree? My halting research has come up with what looks like speculation (Battery acid from cars, gypsum) but not a solid explanation. Also, is there an estimate out there of what percentage of the steel beams were corroded away in this process? I asserted in the March 6 debate that it was a very small amount, certainly not enough to explain a global collapse of a skyscraper in any event.

Sorry for so many questions. I'm sure you've covered all of these before.

NoahFence · Apr 15, 2011

The point is: Thermate is the only known explanation for the melted beam. Sulfur from drywall is speculation.

OK - so planting tons of thermate by evildoers without being detected in three of the largest buildings in NYC (2 of the largest in the world) is an accepted explanation, but the fact that these buildings had drywall is speculation?

Sunstealer · Apr 15, 2011

Dave Rogers said:
Because it's not like there's much nitrogen in the atmosphere normally? Nice work, Chris; it's good to see you back in contention for the Stundies.

Dave

Oh you've gone and spoilt it now!

What he doesn't understand is that in order to study the effect of CO2 you have to know what the concentration (partial pressure) of CO2 is in the atmosphere that you are studying. So if you just connect a CO2 bottle to the furnace and pump CO2 in then you'll still have oxygen present which will affect the study. So what you do is use CO2 plus an inert gas. That way you can control the partial pressure of the CO2 due to the CO2/N2 ratio. That allows you to study multiple partial pressures which is the reason for the whole exercise. N2 is cheap.

He wouldn't have known that and would have posted some silly nonsense. Then I'd have asked him what the composition of the air he was breathing was. He'd have gone to wiki to find out 79% is Nitrogen. Which debunks himself. Funny.

Dave Rogers · Apr 15, 2011

Sunstealer said:
Oh you've gone and spoilt it now!

Sorry, but to resist a Stundie of that quality would have required superhuman forbearance.

Dave

ElMondoHummus · Apr 15, 2011

Dave Rogers said:
Because it's not like there's much nitrogen in the atmosphere normally? Nice work, Chris; it's good to see you back in contention for the Stundies.

Dave

OMG, I should consider taking him off of ignore, just for the lulz.

Christopher7 · Apr 15, 2011

chrismohr said:
A recent post from Sunstealer created these questions for me. As you can see, I am slow to learn chemical matters, and hope you'll bear with me as I re-ask some of these questions:

It appears that you did not read my post.

Thermite melts other metals due to the high heat of reaction not by solid state diffusion of a gas into the parent metal which was observed due to sulphides being found below the solid un-melted surface of the steel. Thermite can't do that.

Show the scientific source for this claim or stop making it.

That claim is pure denial based on double talk. Sulfur is added to thermite to lower the melting point of the steel. Sample #1 was melted/corroded in a manner consistent with thermate. Describing the process in technical terms and then claiming that proves it wasn't thermite is erroneous.

Secondly no aluminium in the photomicrograph means no thermite.

False. The aluminum is vaporized and escapes as white smoke in the thermetic reaction.
The red/gray chips contain iron oxide, aluminum, and silicate. "It is inconclusive from these data whether the O is associated with Si or Al or both". Thermite paper pg 6.

You can't conclude anything else but high temperature corrosion via sulphidation, oxidation, decarburisation leading to a liquid Fe-O-S causing inter-granular attack. UNDERSTOOD. WOULD KEVIN RYAN AGREE WITH THE PRESENCE OF Fe-O-S AND JUST ASSERT IT CAME INTO BEING VIA THERMATE? ALSO IS IT TRUE THAT 4500 DEGREE THERMATE TEMPERATURES WOULD BREAK DOWN THE Fe-O-S CHEMICAL STRUCTURE ENTIRELY, AS I THINK SOMEONE ELSE ON THIS THREAD ASSERTED?

Much has been "asserted" but nothing has been backed up with reliable scientific sources.

Where is the Sulphur in the Harrit et al paper? It's not there - therefore no thermite/thermate. SOMEHOW I THOUGH HARRIT ET ALL DID FIND SULPHUR SOMEWHERE IN THE DUST; AGAIN DO YOU MEAN IN THE RED/GRAY CHIPS NONE WAS FOUND?

The beam from WTC 7 was melted/corroded in a manner consistent with thermate. It was the sulfur that lowered the melting point.

[FONT=&quot]The nano-thermite found in the dust did not have a significant amount of sulfur. An intelligent person would immediately recognize that these two are not related.

There is evidence that both were present. It takes some very twisted logic to conclude that this evidence proves neither was present.

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Christopher7 · Apr 16, 2011

Sunstealer said:
He'd have gone to wiki to find out 79% is Nitrogen. Which debunks himself. Funny.

Ya got me. I had forgotten that earth's atmosphere is primarily nitrogen.

However

The abstract of the source posted as proof that the sulfur might have come from drywall only confirms that calcium sulfate, not iron sulfate, was produced. Calcium sulfate is not corrosive. It is used as a coagulant in tofu. It then takes another step to separate the sulfur from the calcium before it becomes corrosive.

The "sulfur came from the drywall" is supposition, not science.

Christopher7 · Apr 16, 2011

The sulfur paper by Greening assumes that the very specific conditions discussed in the Kuusik paper occurred in the Trade Towers and WTC 7. If this were the case then most of the beams and girders would have been effected.

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Telltale Tom · Apr 16, 2011

It's funny how there were just a few corroded beams and no corroded columns. Almost like it was completely a local effect.

Sunstealer · Apr 16, 2011

Christopher7 said:
Sulfur is added to thermite to lower the melting point of the steel.

C7 I need some help to understand how sulphur in thermate lowers the melting point of steel please.

Thermate is one material, steel is the other. What is the mechanism that makes sulphur in one material lower the melting point in another? How doe it work? Thanks.

Sunstealer · Apr 16, 2011

Christopher7 said:
It appears that you did not read my post.

Show the scientific source for this claim or stop making it.

Sure - 8.7 INTERNAL SULFIDATION.

http://www.scielo.br/pdf/mr/v5n3/v5n3a20.pdf - How can parabolic and linear rate constants be calculated if diffusion isn't the determining mechanism as modelled by solutions to f-i-c-k's laws of diffusion? (damn swear filter - picking up this one). Why do we use steels with high nickel and chromium content at high temperatures where sulphur is present in the atmosphere? You are (indirectly) suggesting that we are wrong to do that. You could save the petrochemical and power production industries billions. Why would we use expensive alloys when cheap plain carbon steels will do. Why are people doing things like this? http://www.hbscc.nl/pdf/41 Coal Gasification Pette.pdf

Kinetics, morphology-structure inter-relationship involving iron sulphide films.

Sulfidation of an Fe-23.4Cr-18.6Al (at.%) alloy was investigated in H2S-H2 atmospheres, Pa, at 973 K. It was found over this pressure range that sulfidation after an early transient period followed the parabolic rate law, being diffusion controlled.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/u781144615mq2867/

Christopher7 said:
That claim is pure denial based on double talk.

Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not true. Instead of throwing a hissy fit, try picking up a text book and learning something.

You should really have learnt by now that I don't make crap up. I can always back up what I say in this regard because I did a degree in metallurgy and all this stuff was covered - If I make stuff up it's easily found out. In my final year, my thesis was on "high temperature corrosion of engineering ceramics". So I had to understand diffusion in order to do the experiments and calculations on the returned data.

Try learning about diffusion before you comment. This is a good paper. http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/mat...ervisningsmateriale/KJM5120-Ch5-Diffusion.pdf

Sunstealer · Apr 16, 2011

Christopher7 said:
False. The aluminum is vaporized and escapes as white smoke in the thermetic reaction.

The last thing you want to be producing in a thermite reaction is gas because the gas will take heat away from the reaction products.

Secondly the boiling point of Al₂O₃ is 2977 °C. That's at the extreme upper end of temperature that thermite is capable of producing. Infact it's above the reference cited below. Why on earth would you want to take heat out of the reactant products by changing one of them to a gas? Madness!

THERMITE MIXTURES

Thermites are mixtures that produce a high heat concentration, usually in the form of molten products. Thermite compositions contain a metal oxide as the oxidizer and a metal -- usually aluminum - as the fuel, although other active metals may be used.

A minimum amount of gas is produced, enabling the heat of reaction to concentrate in the solid and liquid products. High reaction temperatures can be achieved in the absence of volatile materials; typically, values of 2000-2800°C are reached [3]. A metal product such as iron, with a wide liquid range (melting point 1535°C, boiling point 2800°C) produces the best thermite behavior. Upon ignition, a thermite mixture will form aluminum
oxide and the metal corresponding to the starting metal oxide:

Fe 20 3 + 2 Al -} A1 20 3 + 2 Fe

Thermite mixtures have found application as incendiary compositions and spot-welding mixtures. They are also used for the intentional demolition of machinery and for the destruction of documents. Thermites are usually produced without a binder (or with a minimum of binder), because the gaseous products resulting from the combustion of the organic binder will carry away heat and cool the reaction. Iron oxide (Fe 2O 3 or Fe3O 4 ) with aluminum metal is the classic thermite mixture. The particle size of the aluminum should be somewhat coarse to prevent the reaction from being too rapid. Thermites tend to be quite safe to manufacture, and they are rather insensitive to most ignition stimuli. In fact, the major problem with most thermites is getting them to ignite, and a strong first fire is usually needed.

http://www.waterstones.com/watersto...is+mocella/chemistry+of+pyrotechnics/6747788/

Everytime you post you get debunked. Why do you continue to post nonsense? From now on please cite your sources - I expect them to be scientific ones.

How can anyone take your arguments seriously when almost everything you post on this subject is proven not to be true? It's laughable that you continue. I assume you consider this latest routing (amongst dozens) a mere flesh wound. (Monty Python reference)

Did people also note the remark about the binder? Yep, causes Harrit et al a few problems.

Oystein · Apr 16, 2011

Christopher7 said:
...
Show the scientific source for this claim or stop making it.

That's a good, JREFy reply! Let's see if I can do it, too!

Christopher7 said:
Sulfur is added to thermite to lower the melting point of the steel.