urbaf2

Tetranitromethane may be used for nitrations in the presence of boric acid.

Dialkylanilines may be nitrated by this method, as for example N,N-dimethyl-

p-toluidine (E. Schmidt and H. Fischer [57]):

Tetranitromethane like polynitro-aromatic hydrocarbons is able to form addition

compounds (p. 222, Fig. 47). Nevertheless, the existence of an addition compound

of tetranitromethane with benzene has not been proved by thermal analysis, when

this was carried out recently by T. Urbanski, Piskorz, Centner and Maciejewski

[59]. They also examined a number of other systems by means of thermal analysis.

The compositions of various eutectics determined by the above authors are shown

in Table 127.

TABLE 127

EUTECTICS OF TETRANITROMETHANE

Compound added

Benzene

Nitrobenzene

o- Nitrotoluene

m- Nitrotoluene

p- Nitrotoluene

m- Dinitrobenzene

α− Trinitrotoluene

α− Nitronaphthalene

Tetryl

Tetranitromethane

content, wt. %

Freezing point, °C

70.0

57.0

41.5

47.5

81.5

97.0

97.0

90.0

(restricted solubility)

-16.1

-19.1

-28.5

-24.0

+ 1.5

+11.3

+12.3

+ 9.3

Macbeth and his co-workers [60, 61] found that tetranitromethane produced

yellow or brown colour with a number of other compounds as well, for example,

with mercaptans, dioxane, and aliphatic amines. The absorption spectra of such

solutions showed maxima at about 350 mμ.

EXPLOSIVE PROPERTIES

According to Roth [62], pure tetranitromethane cannot be detonated even when

using 10 g of tetryl as detonator. However, the ability of tetranitromethane to

detonate increases considerably when it contains organic impurities, even in small

quantities.