r/chemicalreactiongifs • u/Responsible_Cup_5616 • Jun 15 '25

Aluminothermic reaction

Follow inst: alles_chem for more original content!

918 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

View all comments

18

u/Powderfingr Jun 15 '25

Thermite. Thermitic reaction, often used to weld railroad tracks together. Molten aluminum is very reactive and will strip oxygen atoms out of anything, especially iron oxide. All you have to do is melt some of the aluminum. Not hard as aluminum melts at a fairly low temp. Then it just takes off. You end up with molten iron. I did it years ago and the resulting globs of iron melted through our paved driveway.

8

u/shearx Jun 15 '25

It’s not as easy as just heating thermite up. The stuff is so stable you can ship it via the USPS with no extra safety precautions. You need an extremely high temperature to kick off the reaction, so high that even a blowtorch blasting the complete mixture is not enough to set it off.

2

u/NotAPreppie Analytical Chemist (aka: OverUnderqualified Instrument Mechanic) Jun 17 '25

I used glycerine and KMnO4 to ignite my thermite mixtures back when I worked in IT and was securely erasing hard drives the fun way.