Barium Nitrate

Stephen Jones claims that since he found sulphidation in the metals from the WTC wreckage, he's found proof of thermate. I know I don't need to explain to anyone what's wrong with that, but I have a question that maybe someone with knowledge of chemistry can help me with.

There is much more Barium Nitrate in Thermate than there is sulphur, so what I'm wondering is, what sort of by-products are left from the barium nitrate in a thermate reaction? You'd think that if it was thermate, assuming any evidence of the Barium Nitrate was left, Jones would have found that evidence and exposed it, rather than the purely focusing on the sulphidation alone, which is why I'm wondering what you'd look for if you were searching for evidence of Barium Nitrate in a thermate reaction.

-Josh

I suspect you'd look for barium oxide, but I don't know that for sure.

Josh Redstone said:

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There is much more Barium Nitrate in Thermate than there is sulphur, so what I'm wondering is, what sort of by-products are left from the barium nitrate in a thermate reaction? You'd think that if it was thermate, assuming any evidence of the Barium Nitrate was left, Jones would have found that evidence and exposed it, rather than the purely focusing on the sulphidation alone, which is why I'm wondering what you'd look for if you were searching for evidence of Barium Nitrate in a thermate reaction.

-Josh

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You'd actually look for barium at suspiciously high levels; its counter ion is irrelevant. It would probably be present as Ba(OH)₂ (barium oxide + water), but the identity of the counterion would play no role in its detection. Likely, an analyst would perform a test by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, where levels of atomic Ba, not of the Ba²⁺ cation, are measured.

The nitrate anion is present in many explosives (cf gun powder) because it is a potent oxidant; the act of explosion would transform the nitrate to some reduced nitrogen containing species, but likely some nitrate would remain unreacted. To end I stress that any background test would uncover measurable concentrations of barium, nitrate, hydroxides etc, any species you care to nominate in fact.

(I do realize that thermate is not an explosive).

Gravy said:

I suspect you'd look for barium oxide, but I don't know that for sure.

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Thanks Gravy.
Upon looking through Steven Jone's paper, he doesn't mention barium oxide. Even though, like you said, it might not be what you'd actually find, he doesn't seem to say much on the matter of evidence for thermate except for the molton steel (which might not be molton steel) or the high tempurature plumes of smoke (which might not be aluminum or iron oxide fumes).

I'm just surprised that more conspiracy theorists haven't picked up on this flaw in his argument yet (....I guess I don't know conspiracy theorists very well)

Sorry for the double post.

anor277 said:

You'd actually look for barium at suspiciously high levels; its counter ion is irrelevant. It would probably be present as Ba(OH)₂ (barium oxide + water), but the identity of the counterion would play no role in its detection. Likely, an analyst would perform a test by atomic absorption spectrophotometry, where levels of atomic Ba, not of the Ba²⁺ cation, are measured.

The nitrate anion is present in many explosives (cf gun powder) because it is a potent oxidant; the act of explosion would transform the nitrate to some reduced nitrogen containing species, but likely some nitrate would remain unreacted. To end I stress that any background test would uncover measurable concentrations of barium, nitrate, hydroxides etc, any species you care to nominate in fact.

(I do realize that thermate is not an explosive).

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So if I follow what you're saying here, even after the reaction, there's a chance you might still find barium nitrate, and if you didn't, you still would probably find barium oxide (or even barium with a different counter ion?)

I hope I'm undertsanding all this

Josh Redstone said:

Sorry for the double post.



So if I follow what you're saying here, even after the reaction, there's a chance you might still find barium nitrate, and if you didn't, you still would probably find barium oxide (or even barium with a different counter ion?)

I hope I'm undertsanding all this

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@JR, You've got it, you'd find barium in some form; halide, hydroxide, oxide, nitrate. The analytical method would be made specific to barium. But someone unscrupulous could perform an analysis, find background levels of barium, and then claim it was consistent with thermite (marmite?) reaction. I suspect a thermite reaction would give a unique and measurable residue.

Thanks for the help

anor277 said:

But someone unscrupulous could perform an analysis, find background levels of barium, and then claim it was consistent with thermite (marmite?) reaction.

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Would you say the same concept could be applied to the sulpher Jones found? It's my understanding that the drywall in the World Trade Centres contained sulphur, which could definitely count as a background source for sulpher.

Josh Redstone said:

Thanks for the help



Would you say the same concept could be applied to the sulpher Jones found? It's my understanding that the drywall in the World Trade Centres contained sulphur, which could definitely count as a background source for sulpher.

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@JR absolutely. The sulfur in the drywall was present as sulfate dianion, as CaSO₄ - it would be prodigiously hard to show that any sulfur did not originate from that source (and there is a paper somewhere cited on these threads that posits that the sulfate was reduced in the fire to coat the steel). Most analysts would take great time and trouble to establish the background levels.

Of course all of us are trying to recreate what happened by looking at the physical evidence remaining. Maybe Sherlock Holmes could do that, but I doubt Jones can.

Thank you very much for the help

Josh, yesterday TS1234 raised this issue in his usual accusatory fashion, with the usual result, starting with post 109 here.

Could the sulfur in the drywall combine with fires to lower the melting point of steel in a eutectic reaction? In other words, is there a mechanism that could involve the sulfur present in the gypsum wallboard in intergranular melting of steel? Would that be hot enough to evaporate steel, or just melt it, or neither?

What's going on here?

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm

TruthSeeker1234 said:

Could the sulfur in the drywall combine with fires to lower the melting point of steel in a eutectic reaction? In other words, is there a mechanism that could involve the sulfur present in the gypsum wallboard in intergranular melting of steel? Would that be hot enough to evaporate steel, or just melt it, or neither?

What's going on here?

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm

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The original form of the document you linked is here. I've addressed this several times already, including the last thread where you brought this up. You can read in this post why the findings rule out thermate.

However, your question is a reasonable one.

It is not fully understood how the sulphur bound to the iron in this mixture. These pieces of steel were singled out because they are unusual, and also quite rare among the rubble where they were found.

The fact that the sulphur led to a eutectic mixture does not mean that the steel was melted or evaporated. Far from it, in fact. Because the mixture is eutectic, but is still there rather than melting (breaking the molecular structure observed and changing the shape of the steel pieces), it says that the steel was not only never melted, but it never experienced temperatures that would melt the eutectic mixture, found to be much lower than the normal melting point of steel. So the answer is "neither." However the sulphur got there, it must have happened well below the steel melting point.

The sulphur got there not because of melting, but through some other chemical process. It probably did involve heating, however, although it's barely possible that exposure at room temperature at a very long time could lead to the effect seen. The more likely hypothesis is that sulphur was present while the steel was exposed to elevated temperatures, but temperatures well below its melting point and below the melting point of the mixture.

One possible culprit, since the pieces came from WTC 7, is the large amount of diesel fuel contained in the structure -- which burned. My best guess (which could easily be wrong) is the sulphur in the samples seen came from the diesel fuel, while it was burning. But I suppose it is also possible that crumbled wallboard was the source of the sulphur, perhaps sprinkled on or held in close proximity to the steel as the fires raged around it. Hard to be certain.

While these samples are interesting, I have seen no speculation that they were anything but point oddities, and thus did not contribute in any meaningful way to WTC 7 collapse. These samples also rule out thermate, as explained in my other post. Thus, they are interesting and worthy of study, but ultimately do not contradict the official theory in any way.

Just being curious here, but does anyone know if it's possible for the sulphur in the wall board to become sulphuric acid? Given all the heat and other stuff happening is it possible for that kind of chemical reaction to occur?

Please understand that I know about as much about chemistry as your average gerbil does.

Brainache said:

Just being curious here, but does anyone know if it's possible for the sulphur in the wall board to become sulphuric acid? Given all the heat and other stuff happening is it possible for that kind of chemical reaction to occur?

Please understand that I know about as much about chemistry as your average gerbil does.

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I'm not a great chemist either. Somebody here can probably give you a better answer, but...

Off the top of my head, any chemical reaction that leaves sulphur probably involved H₂S or H₂SO₄ at some point. Wallboard contains hydrous calcium sulphate, CaSO₄ - H₂O, not energetically favoring sulphuric acid, but close.

Landfills with lots of wallboard are classic producers of H₂S through microbe activity (see Moreau et. al., Word document file). That's one way to convert the gypsum, so there must be others.

In short, my best guess is that it's "possible." But we still would need to better understand what happened in WTC 7. Given the ingredients we see at the finish, guessing that sulphuric acid played a part seems reasonable.

So Barnett never said "Steel Members Partly Evaporated"? Or he did? Or what? What is up with the freaking New York TImes article of Novemeber 29 2001 James Glanz? Please, this is really a sore spot with me, because I really thought the article said a whole bunch of stuff, and now it's totally different. Hmmmmmmm.

TruthSeeker1234 said:

So Barnett never said "Steel Members Partly Evaporated"? Or he did? Or what? What is up with the freaking New York TImes article of Novemeber 29 2001 James Glanz? Please, this is really a sore spot with me, because I really thought the article said a whole bunch of stuff, and now it's totally different. Hmmmmmmm.

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Are you suggesting that newspapers never make mistakes?

That'd be my guess. James Glanz may have used the word "evaporate" in an imprecise way, or perhaps an editor spruced it up improperly, and then they published a correction later. You might want to take it up with him.

I don't see this a big deal.

Brainache said:

Just being curious here, but does anyone know if it's possible for the sulphur in the wall board to become sulphuric acid? Given all the heat and other stuff happening is it possible for that kind of chemical reaction to occur?

Please understand that I know about as much about chemistry as your average gerbil does.

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I know a bit of chemistry, but as to the chemistry of sulfur in low oxygen, high diesel fuel environments that's way beyond my knowledge. In my opinion, the answer to your question is probably no. Gypsum is a highly oxidized form of sulfur (i.e. S(VI)) and as SO₄^2- is a very weak base it is not going to recombine with water or H⁺ to form acidic HSO₄^- or H₂SO₄. As R. Mackey related above there is sulfur present in fuel oils (to some significant degree, up to 1000 ppm I've read as one estimate) and it is in the form of aromatic heterocycles, such as thiophene, where sulfur is directly bound to a 2 carbon nuclei; that is the sulfur is in a more reduced state. Combustion of the heterocycle could well produce SO₂ and SO₃; these are the acid anhydrides of H₂SO₄ and H₂SO₄ resp. Just add water to the oxides and you get your acids.

Please note that in the conditions of an office fire, I doubt you're going to find too many experts pronouncing on what could or what could not happen. Chemical reactions are going to take place on exposed surfaces, which is far cry from my experience of reactions in solution.

Gosh, I like it when people know stuff. All I can do is provide entertainment. Here's me as an aromatic raging heterocycle, with the head of a female vampire pit bull.

TruthSeeker1234 said:

Could the sulfur in the drywall combine with fires to lower the melting point of steel in a eutectic reaction? In other words, is there a mechanism that could involve the sulfur present in the gypsum wallboard in intergranular melting of steel? Would that be hot enough to evaporate steel, or just melt it, or neither?

What's going on here?

http://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/evidence/metallurgy/WTC_apndxC.htm

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Wall board is not even the main source of sulfur-sulfuric acid, the High sulfur Diesel fuel and other items in the building contain it in much larger quantities.

http://delta.ucdavis.edu/WTC.htm

Gravy said:

Gosh, I like it when people know stuff. All I can do is provide entertainment. Here's me as an aromatic raging heterocycle, with the head of a female vampire pit bull.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/879045336e441b1e2.jpg[/qimg]
​

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That pic would be totally realistice if it weren't for the bike helmet designed for a human, rather than the special female vampire pit-bull helmet design.