The oil this produced was incredibly explosive, writes Nobel biographer Kenne Fant, and Sobrero considered it too destructive and volatile to have any practical uses. He had a long interest in the use of explosives, the encyclopedia writes, influenced by the family business selling explosive mines and other equipment.
In the early s, having completed his education, he began experimenting with explosives. The solution he devised was a small wooden detonator with a black powder charge that was placed in a metal container full of nitroglycerin.
When it was lit and exploded, the liquid nitroglycerin would also explode. A few years later, in , he invented the blasting cap, which replaced the wooden detonator.
Later experiments had shown that amorphous and crystalline nitromannite decomposed in the presence of diffuse light. With direct light the decomposition was very fast, releasing nitric vapor, water, etc. These facts made the use of nitromannite in war weapons questionable because it might decompose and make the weapon inefficient for attack or defense. Sobrero's main contribution to the development of modern explosives was initially described in a paper read before the Academy of Sciences of Turin Sobrero, c , in which he gave a very detailed description of the manufacture of nitroglycerine by reacting glycerin with a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids.
Interesting enough, in spite of being aware of the dangers of self-detonation of the product, he kept a gram sample, which much later he donated to the Academy. Sobrero's face was badly scarred as a result of an explosion in the s.
The details of the discovery and fabrication process of nitroglycerine were repeated in papers published in and Sobrero, , , together with a description of additional properties of nitroglycerine: "Pyroglycerin has a density of 1. It has a sweet and agreeable taste and presents toxic properties. A drop of it heated slowly over a platinum plate seems to decompose generating nitrous vapors.
At a higher temperature the decomposition is fast with deflagration and flame, leaving a small carbonaceous residue.
A small amount heated fast to the decomposition temperature, decomposes violently. A small drop of a few decigrams can produce a detonation similar to the firing of a rifle. The glass of the vessel in which this experiment is performed will break if it is not strong enough". Pyroglycerin exerts a toxic action on animal physiology: "It is enough to put a small drop on the tongue and spit it immediately, to experience a strong headache for many hours.
Four or five centigrams introduced in the stomach will kill a sucking pig. This toxic property has been observed with a mouse and a capybara a small rodent from Brazil. Pyroglycerin acts as an oxidant on phosphorus, copper, and potassium. It dissolves in a hot aqueous solution of potassium hydroxides and becomes brown.
With hydrogen chloride it yields chlorine and a kind of aqua regia. The physiological properties of pyroglycerin are very interesting and require a careful study; they may lead to useful applications. In a later communication to the Academy of Turin, read on Sobrero, , Sobrero recapitulated the history of the product and insisted that he had not discovered it while staying at Pelouze's laboratory but during his tenure at the Scuola di Meccanica e di Chimica Applicata alle Artes in Turin: "hence, nitroglycerine is the fruit of Italian work exclusively When I think of all the victims killed during nitroglycerine explosions, and the terrible havoc that has been wreaked, which in all probability will continue to occur in the future, I am almost ashamed to admit to be its discoverer.
According to Dumas Dumas, initially gunpowder a committee appointed by the French War Ministry in changed the name pyroxylin to guncotton was celebrated in excess, criticized extensively, and discarded with indifference. The plan was to compare the effect produced by an underwater explosion of gunpowder and cotton powder on the granite rocks. The gunpowder powder explosion hardly damaged the rocks while that of cotton powder caused the disappearance of a huge rock and reduced it to pieces.
Not only that, the explosion threw a very large number of deep-dwelling fish to the surface of the sea, either dead or stunned. This surprising result was also used a proof that the mortality of fish that accompanied maritime volcano eruptions was not necessarily due to the heating of the water or to the release of poisonous gases; it could very well be caused by the brusque movement of masses of water.
The armies did not see a menace in the fast explosion of cotton powder that pulverized granite. Artillerymen would classify cotton powder in the category of smashing powders, which should be kept away from the arsenals. Ordinary powders were different in the sense that powder cannon could catch fire while being prepared as a result of an accidental shock; experience indicated that they did not inflame spontaneously in the storage room.
Once prepared, the only dangers associated with gunpowder were the ones resulting from its mishandling. The situation with cotton powder was different, it could be prepared rather safely but its storage presented a safety risk.
Not only that, degraded cotton powder lost its explosive power and converted largely into sugary material. After fourteen years, about one-half of the samples exposed to air and humidity would decompose without detonating.
Thus cotton powder remained what it was from the very beginning, a material appropriate for mining more than for military uses. In , Pelouze and Maurey, one of the gunpowder commissars, reported on the use of guncotton as a war agent Pelouze and Maurey, This paper was an extensive critical report on the new procedures developed by the Austrian general Lenk for fabricating and using guncotton.
Between and this establishment had provided about kg of the product for the many experiments done in France to substitute by guncotton the gunpowder used in mines and fire arms.
Similarly, the Austrian Army had established large manufacturing facilities at Hirtenberg, under the direction of Lenk, but until their process remained a mystery, no foreigner having been admitted to the factory. In France, two main objections had been raised against the substitution, one based on the fragility effect that the new powder imparted to the walls of weapons, and the other related to the accidents of decomposition and spontaneous explosions that had been observed in France and aboard.
A strong explosion at the Austrian factory in had led to a substantial reduction of the manufacture, until Lenk had introduced some alleged improvements in the process. Although Lenk did not contest the possible exothermic reactions that could lead to the inflammation of guncotton, he believed that taking appropriate measures during the preparation process could prevent them. The Lenk procedure was based on the same chemical reactions as the ones used at the Bouchet arsenal.
The Austrian and French guncottons were a compound resulting from the immersion of cotton in a mixture of nitric and sulfuric acids. The proportions of these two acids could be varied in a wide range without modifying the quality of the product. According to Lenk, the method used at Bouchet, where g of cotton were reacted with 2 liters of acid mixture, did not yield the same product as the Austrian one, which used a substantially larger volume of acids and special equipment for mixing the reagents.
This action retarded the development of gases and eliminated the traces of acid they might contain. The French researchers analyzed all the information available from Austria and compared guncotton prepared by the two methods. Nitroglycerine was the first, and is still one of the most widely produced nitrate esters.
It is used in dynamites produced by absorbing nitroglycerine in fine wood meal or other powdered absorbent. This process prevents the formation of micro bubbles and stabilizes the liquid.
The nitroglycerine is also thickened or gelatinized by the addition of a small percentage of nitrocellulose, a process which assists in preventing "weeping" exuding or settling out of the absorbent material. Because settling does occur, boxes of stored non-gelled dynamites are turned over at regular intervals to reverse the settling flow. As will be detailed below, Alfred Nobel, another of Pelouze's students, took the knowledge back to the Nobel family's defunct armaments factory and began experimenting with the materiel around ; it did, indeed, prove to be very difficult to discover how to handle it safely.
Throughout the s Nobel received several patents around the world for mixtures, devices and manufacturing methods based on the explosive power of nitroglycerine, eventually leading to the invention of dynamite. The development of nitroglycerine as an explosive Bellamy and De Modica, To Sobrero goes the credit of having discovered nitroglycerine, to Alfred Nobel and his family, of transforming it into an industrial commodity.
Immanuel Nobel , Alfred's father, was a well-known building constructor, who during his stay in Russia became interested in explosives. In he sent his year old son Alfred to Paris to further his scientific education at Pelouze's laboratory. During this stay Alfred became acquainted with Sobrero and his discoveries and on his return to Sweden the Nobel family initiated experiments on ways of taming nitroglycerine for use in mining and quarrying.
They duplicated Sobrero's methods until they were able to produce nitroglycerine in kilogram amounts. Their major problem was how to get nitroglycerine to detonate properly; sometimes it would explode without releasing all the available energy, sometimes, it would merely burn. Eventually, Alfred Nobel was able to develop a new type of detonator, which solved the problem. The detonator was placed in contact with the explosive and set off by means of a fuse passing through the wooden stopper. After solving the problem of controlled detonation, the next obstacle was how to transport nitroglycerine without risk.
The alcoholic solution was packed in hermetically sealed cans to prevent the evaporation of the solvent and sent to any distance and in any climate without the risk of explosion. At the job site the nitroglycerine was recovered by adding water to the solution.
The process was still dangerous because any spilled alcohol-nitroglycerine mixture rapidly lost its methyl alcohol by evaporation leaving a dangerous coating of the explosive on the ground. George M. The frozen explosive was subsequently thawed before use.
Mowbray was able to manufacture and sell about tons of nitroglycerine to mining and engineering firms, before closing his plant because of patent difficulties.
Despite all efforts to transport and use nitroglycerine in the safest possible way, accidents continued to occur and led some countries to either completely ban its use or severely restrict its transport. On September 3, , an explosion occurred in Nobel's laboratory, which was situated in his home, on the outskirts of Stockholm. Five people were killed, including year old Emil Nobel, Alfred's youngest brother. As a result of this accident the city of Stockholm enforced laws that experiments with explosives could not be made within the city limits of Stockholm.
Nobel therefore temporarily continued production on a barge anchored in Lake Malaren to the west of Stockholm.
Nobel began now searching for a porous material, which would absorb nitroglycerine without diminishing its explosive capacity.
Of the many materials tested porous silica, paper, paper pulp, wood waste, brick dust, coal, dry clay, etc. It was chemically inert and would easily absorb up to three times its weight of nitroglycerine; the resulting putty-like substance could be shaped into sticks ready for the user to put straight into the borehole, and while it was sensitive to shock, a blasting cap could still detonate it.
Dynamite established Nobel's fame worldwide and was soon put to use in blasting tunnels, cutting canals, and building railways and roads. Before very long, two groups of dynamites were being developed: a dynamites with an inert absorbent, e. The usual active absorbents are substances such as sodium, potassium, and ammonium nitrate, chlorates, and black powder, but they may also be a non-explosive material under ordinary conditions, for example, sawdust, sugar, and coal, which in the presence of a powerful explosive like nitroglycerine contributes to the energy release by converting to products like CO 2 and H 2 O.
Nobel continued to experiment in search of better compositions and in he invented a more powerful form of dynamite, blasting gelatin, which he patented the following year. Blasting gelatin is a gel-like mixture of nitrocellulose with nitroglycerine having a consistency depending upon the amount of nitrocellulose dissolved in the nitroglycerine.
Unlike many other dynamites, it does not absorb water and is almost unaffected by immersion in water. It also resists freezing better than the other dynamites.
In Nobel introduced ballistite, one of the first nitroglycerine smokeless powders and a precursor of cordite. The camphor reacted with any acidic products of the chemical breakdown of the two explosives, but did tend to evaporate over time leaving a potentially unstable mixture. Nobel's patent specified that the nitrocellulose should be "of the well-known soluble kind".
Nowadays, ballistite is a double-base powder used as a rocket propellant. It is composed of two explosive substances, nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine, blended together with diphenylamine, which acts as a stabilizer. It burns with a considerable amount of flash and smoke, and generates a great volume of gas. Ballistite burns progressively, but at a rate dependent upon the composition and physical characteristics of the powder grain, the temperature of the powder grain before ignition, and the pressure during reaction.
By there were 93 Nobel factories in the world with an annual production capacity of 66, tons. The physiological influence of nitroglycerine Rossettani and Cervasel, ; Marsh and Marsh, Nobel developed many improvements in explosives, and he held patents in different countries in electrochemistry, optics, biology, and physiology. Upon his death, his will provided that the bulk of his fortune go to a fund that would award prizes annually for advancements in Physics, Chemistry, Physiology or Medicine, Literature, and Peace.
Induction Event Collegiate Inventors Event. US Patent No. Born October 21, - Died December 10, Related Inductees.
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