Gladly.
The red-gray chips are flakes of red primer paint on gray iron oxide. The iron oxide is the surface of structural steel from probably the floor joists, flaked off probably when the towers collapsed and all the floors got ground to pieces; thousands of tons of lightweight concrete in the floor slabs got intermingled with the joists and knocked paint off which could then join the dust ejecta.
They say "highly energetic" or some such nonsense, but it isn't really so. The whole "chips burned with extreme energy, so it has to be thermite which gets extremely hot" is flawed on several levels.
The only numerical measure of how energetic the chips are is their energy density: That's how much energy is released per mass unit when they burn.
First, the idea that thermite is "highly energetic" is not correct. Thermite does NOT have a high energy density, compared to other common materials. Ideal thermite has an energy density of 3.9 kJ/g (thousands of Joules per gram), actual thermite somewhat less, and nano-thermite, for various reasons, even less; one experimental source referenced by Harrit is a paper by Tillotson e.al. who measured 1.5kJ/g for their preparation of nano-thermite. This is very little compared to pretty much all organic materials: Fuels such as jet fuel have well over 40 kJ/g, many plastics in the range from 25-40 kJ/g, paper and wood in the vicinity of 18 kJ/g. Even your own body, despite it consisting of 60% water, has an average energy density of 8-10 kJ/g - burning human bodies is more "highly energetic" than even ideal thermite!
Secondly, the four chips that Harrit e.al. describe in their paper were measured with energy densities of 1.5, 3, 6 and 7.5 kJ/g. So at least 2 of the 4 samples are more energetic than even ideal thermite could ever be! This is clear-cut proof that the chips are not primarily fueled by their allegedly containing thermite - some other material MUST be the leading factor. Still, a max. energy density of 7.5 kJ/g is not remarkable - as I wrote above, that's less then what human tissue or paper have.
Thirdly, the XEDS spectra and the photomicrographs published by Harrit e.al. show that the red layer of the chips contain iron oxide and aluminium only as minority cosntituents. We have data by fellow truther Mark Basile, who is acknowledged in the Harrit paper and who says he repeated some of Harrit's experiments, that shows that only about 5%-10% by weight of the red layer could be thermite - the rest is silicon, carbon, excess oxigene... Further diluting the proportion of the energy thermite would add to the 1.5 - 7.5 kJ/g that were measured.
Fourthly, the gray layer is iron oxide without aluminium or anything else that coulkd react exothermically - that layer only adds dead, inert mass to the chips, which reduces even further the maximum energy output by mass unit that thermite could theoretically provide.
Fifthl,y Harrit e.al. do notice the organic matrix that really dominates the red layer, and do comment that they suspect it adds energy to the chip. What we know by now is that this organic matrix MUST provide well over 90% of the measured energy output. But as that output is only 7.5 kJ/g, a great number of very ordinary organic compounds could do that.
So what has our theory to say here? Well, we claim the red layer is 71.5% by weight epoxy. Epoxy is an organic compound that burns just as most organic compounds. Ivan has figured out that it ignites somewhere in the range 350°C to 450°C. It is sure to have an energy density that might be in the vicinity of 20 kJ/g. If you consider that maybe half the mass of the chips is inert iron oxide from the gray layer, and that 30% of the red layer is inert pigments, then 20 kJ/g for epoxy alone would dilute to at most roundabout 7 kJ/g for red paint on oxidized steel - just about what Harrit measured.
SUMMARY:
Epoxy-based paint is more energetoc than thermite. Since Harrit measured energy density exceeding the maximum that's theoretically possible for thermite, but being in good accorcance with what one could expect from epoxy-based paint on spalled steel, Harrit's theory is refuted, or theory is strengthened.
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