Too little thermite to blow up Mark Basile's chip

Abstract

Mark Basile analysed red-gray chips he found in dust samples collected in lower Manhattan very shortly after the collapse of the World Trade towers on 2001/09/11 [1.1]. In particular, he shows how vigorously his chip reacts when heated on a steel strip, producing rapid ejections of gas [1.2]. Basile suggests that this reaction is best explained by the thermite reaction, apparently affecting the organic matrix.

In an earlier blog post [2], I have shown that his data reveals that at most 4.7% by weight of the "energetic" red layer of one particular chip could possibly be stoichiometric thermite, while most of the layer (ca. 88%) must be a matrix of some unidentified polymer.

Some 9/11 Truth Movement adherents who believe that these red-gray chips are "thermitic material" claim that organic substances are typically a component of modern nano-thermite preparations, both as collateral residue of the synthesis (e.g. ca. 10% [3.1]) and as an additive to give nano-thermite explosive properties [3.2] (the organic material is rapidly turned to gas and can do volume work).

In this post, I will show that, at a mass ratio between thermite and organic matrix of about 1:19, as Basile's data implies, the chemical energy of the thermite does not nearly suffice to turn organic polymers to gas. It follows that the rapid reaction and creation of gas is powered by organic combustion and perhaps externally applied heat, not a thermite reaction.

Data

Basile's "lucky" chip #13

As I showed in [2], under the most "thermite friendly" assumptions, and taking Basile's data as it is, the red layer of his "lucky" red-gray chip #13 contains, by weight,

• At most 4.74% ideal (stoichiometric) thermite (of the common Fe₂O₃+Al variety)
• At least 87.8% solid hydrocarbon matrix, unknown chemistry. It is safe to assume that this matrix is some form of organic polymer (or a mix of polymers), that contains no Fluorine or Chlorine
• Ca. 7.1% (the balance) inorganic compounds, assumed to be inert

Thermal properties of various polymers

The Appendix of [4] lists many combustion-related thermal properties of many organic polymers. The following values will be used in the discussion. I chose Epoxy as the reference material, since James Millette [5] has identified epoxy as the matrix material for some red-gray chips. The properties of many other non-halogenic organic polymers are in roughly the same magnitude as those of epoxy. I will state ranges for most polymers in parentheses, even though the extreme values usually are for materials that wouldn't make much sense for a matrix:

• Onset of decomposition: T_d 427 °C (250 - 570 °C, Table A-1, first column). This property describes at which temperature the matrix will beginn to decompose, a process that usually involves some charring and some release of gas. It will also show in DSC curves.
• Ignition temperatur T_ign: 427°C (271 - 600°C, Table A-1., third column). Note the ignition temperature may be influenced by association / mixing with other materials. Note also that some polymers don't ignite (don't burn with atmospheric oxygen) and just decompose
• Enthalpy of gasification h_g: 1.5 kJ/g (1.1 - 2.6 kJ/g, Table A-2, third column). This value describes how much energy must be expended to break the molecules down to gas molecules such as CO₂ or water vapor during burning or decomposition - not including the heat necessary to bring the polymer to the temperature where the molecukle structure begins to break down. Note that most polymers leave behind some solid residue (char) after gasification: Epoxy 4% of its mass (column two of table A-2), others up to 75%.
• Heat capacity c_p: 1.7 J/g/K (0.93 - 2.09 J/g/K, Table A-3, third column). This value describes how much energy is expended when heating 1 g of polymer by 1 °C (or by 1 K, which is the same). This value changes with temperature, it is given for normal "room temperature" conditions, but it typically increases somewhat with rising temperature. I will consider it as constant, which is a "thermite-friendly" imprecision.
• Effective heat of combustion HOC: 20.4 kJ/g (14.4 - 41.9 kJ/g, Table A-5, first column). This is the energy effectively released by 1 g of polymer under air and takes into account that the theoretical maximum is not reached in praxis. Epoxy for example burns with only only 75% effectiveness in experiment. This is again a "thermite-friendly" choice, as I will use the theoretical max for thermite (3.96 kJ/g) and not actual effective heat release (perhaps 3 kJ/g or less).

Discussion

Heating epoxy with thermite

To simplyfy things, let's ignore the inorganic components other than stoichiometric thermite, and mix thermite and epoxy in the proportions according to Basile's data: 4.74 g of thermite, 87.8 g of epoxy. Let's further assume we could ignite this thermite and have it react perfectly within the epoxy matrix without heating the epoxy first, and have all of the heat of reaction be absorbed by the epoxy. Could the thermite reaction turn the matrix to gas and cause the rapid gas ejections seen in Basile's video? Let's see!

4.74 g of thermite contain at most (theoretical maximum) 4.74 g x 3.96 kJ/g = 18.7 kJ

If you put these 18.7 kJ of heat into 87.8 g of epoxy, which has a specific heat capacity of 1.7 J/g/°C, you warm it by 18,700 J / 87.8 g / 1.7 J/g/°C = 125 °C, reaching ca. 150 °C. Neither epoxy nor any other polymer would come close to the start of decomposition just from this thermite reaction!

Gasifying epoxy with thermite

Of course, the assumption that the epoxy isn't already heated to the brink of decomposition isn't realistic - thermite wouldn't ignite at room temperature, and you can't heat only the thermite inside the matrix. So next up. let's assume the epoxy is already heated to its decompostion temperature of 427°C, as is the thermite - which is concidentally (???) the temperature at which Harrit e.al. [6] observed ignition of red-gray chips. How much epoxy could the reaction of 4.74 g thermite turn to gas? Let's see!

Epoxy has an effective enthalpy of gasification of 1.5 kJ/g. The energy release of our thermite, 18.7 kJ, could thus gasify 18.kJ / 1.5 kJ/g = 12.5 g of epoxy, out of 87.8 g of epoxy in our sample, that's about 14%.

What causes the gas jets and the heating of "lucky" chip #13?

Marc Basile had heated his chip on a thin (50 µm) steel strip through which he sent a constant electrical current. Here a screenshot from 40:17 in his presentation [1]:

This is, obviously, an important heat source. He gives is no idea how hot the strip got during the experiment. Hot enough apparently to ignite and gasify something - but potentially much hotter than just that. At the very least, this external heat infused 400 K x 1.7 J/g/K = 680 kJ/g into the probe just to heat the epoxy - thermite's theoretical max would be about 180 J/g, or 26% maximum compared with the heating strip.

It is obvious from my calculations above that thermite, even if present at all and in the maximum possible amount, contributes only minimally to the reaction of the organic matrix.

In particular: Every Joule expended on heating the matrix can't be expended to gasify it. Every Joule expended to gasify the matrix can't be used to heat any bit of matrix. And every Joule expended to do work on the matrix is lost to heat and ignite the next thermite particles to continue the thermite reaction. This material could never burn if the matrix were inert and the probe weren't externally heated. What is the use of thermite in such low concentration?

The organic matrix on the other hand is assured to release enough energy to: Heat the probe including all minerals and the gray layer, achieve full gasification, and warm its environment: of the 20.4 kJ/g effective energy density, only 1.5 kJ/g are expended on gasification, 0.7 kJ/g (1.7 J/g/K x 400 K) are expended to heat the same mass of epoxy from room temperature to ignition temperature, and then 18.2 kJ/g are left to do work on everything else

Conclusions

The three obvious and available heat sources in Basile's ignition experiment provide this much energy per gram of probe:

1. Combustion of epoxy: 12.6 - 36.8 kJ/g (Epoxy: 17.9 kJ/g = )
2. Heating strip: 0.7 kJ/g or more
3. Thermite: 0.18 kJ/g or less

5% Thermite in an organic matrix make no difference. On its on, it couldn't warm the matrix even to onset decomposition, it could not destroy more than a small fraction of the polymer molecules, and it would be incapable of doing any significant work on anything outside of the chip

Whatever reaction is observed in the video of chip #13 burning, it is not driven by a thermite reaction. It is simple organic polymer combustion, helped to an unknown but probably significant degree by the external heat of the heating strip underneath.

Additional remarks

1. I believe almost all red-gray chips found in WTC dust, including Basile's chip, are some sort of red primer paint on spalled steel / steel mill. Gauging the composition of LaClede standard primer [7], I suspect that Basile's quantification of the elemental composition is a bit off the mark - I would expect to see closer to 30% inorganic materials rather than the 12% according to Basile. I suspect in particular that he underestimates the amount of iron: His red layer is red paint, and the red pigment most certainly is iron oxide. There should be closer to 10% of the element iron rather than Basile's 2.6%. However, I am only guessing here, and I can only go by the data Basile provides

I am convinced that Millette [5] and Harrit e.al. [6] looked, most closely at LaClede standard primer, which according to my own analysis [7] can be expected to contain 2.4% aluminium. Harrit's chips a-d match the expected elemental composition of LaClede paint so closely, that I would say definitely these chips contain about that much of the elememnt Al. If, hypothetically, all that Al were elemental, it could react with three times as much of the iron oxide to form 10.4% thermite - against 71.5% epoxy. This ratio, 1:6.9 thermite:epoxy, is still insufficient to either heat epoxy from room temperature to ignition point, or gasify most of it, and the heat content of the epoxy would still outnumber that of the thermite by a ratio of at least 50:1, rendering the thermite insignificant.

In further, unpublished work, I have estimated that the total Al content of Harrit e.al.'s MEK-soaked chip ([7], Fig. 14) is only 0.6%, to allow for a maximum of 2.4% thermite. It should be obvious by now that this is even less significant than the hypothetical thermite-content of Basile's chip or the chips a-d that resemble LaClede so much. It is interesting that this MEK-soaked chip, with its very low overall Al-content, is the only one where the "thermite" theorists seem to have identified any elemental Al at all.

References

[1.1] Mark Basile: 911 Dust Analysis Raises Questions. Videotaped presentation at the Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, New Hampshire on 26th June 2010, 4pm (On YouTube; 59:22 minutes, Last retrieved: June 16 2012)

[1.2] Mark Basile ignites a chip (nano-thermite) - 9/11. This szene is shown in [1.1] between between 41:43 and 42:00 minutes. (On YouTube; 0:16 minutes, Last retrieved: June 16 2012)

[2] Oystein: How Mark Basile confirms that red-gray chips are not thermitic. Posted in author's blog on March 18 2012

[3.1] T.M. Tillotson et al: Nanostructured energetic materials using sol-gel methodologies. Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 285 (2001) 338-345

[3.2] (Currently too lazy to find an exemplary paper)

[4] Richard E. Lyon and Marc L. Janssens: Polymer Flammability. May 2005 - Final Report for the U.S. Department of Transportation and FAA. Report No. DOT/FAA/AR-05/14

[5] James R. Millette: Revised Report of Results: MVA9119. Progress Report on the Analysis of Red/Gray Chips in WTC dust. Prepared for Classical Guide, Denver, 01 March 2012.

[6] Niels H. Harrit et al: Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe. The Open Chemical Physics Journal, 2009, 2, 7-31. Figure 19 shows ignition temperatures around 430°C

[7] Oystein: Another primer at the WTC: LaClede Standard Primer

. Posted in author's blog on March 16 2012

Monitoring Truther Petition about WTC7 at Avaaz

Updated June 8th, 2012: Uploaded Graphic "What Kawika is getting so far" with new data points for today
Updated June 10th, 2012: Uploaded Graphic "What Kawika is getting so far" with new data points for today
Updated June 14th, 2012: Uploaded Graphic "What Kawika is getting so far" with new data points up to 06/13, and new graph to compare Dream vs. Reality. Also, link to kawika's latest comment from 06/11
Updated June 19th, 2012: Uploaded Graphic "What Kawika is getting so far" and "Dream vs. Reality" with new data points up to 06/18
Updated June 26th, 2012: Uploaded Graphic "What Kawika is getting so far", "What Kawika wants" (short term till jun 25th) and "Dream vs. Reality" with new data points up to 06/25

The Poll

Over at 911Blogger, Mark Graham announced on May 7th that he has set up a petition to "Revise the U.S. government final report on the collapse of Building 7" at the independent petitioning platform "Avaaz.com". This was his second attempt, a first petition had been pulled by Avaaz days earlier. This first attempt was blogged by user "kawika" on April 24th:

MILLION SIGNATURES to be sent to NIST
Wouldn't that be nice? Making this viral is no big deal.

What kawika dreams:

In the thread to Mark's second petition (which, by the way, was also pulled by Avaaz, but reinstated a week later), kawika was enthusiastic on June 3rd (my bolding):

We are at 999
One more to break through the 1000 mark. Send this link to all your contacts. This will grow exponentially.

What does that mean - "grow exponentially"?

In a nutshell, it means that every day, the number of signers will increase. Suppose, for example, every day, on average, any 12% of the people who have already signed this petition would convince one other person to also sign. Then the number of signatures would increase by 12% in one day. If it starts today at 1000 signatures, then 12% increase would mean 120 new signatures by tomorrow, or 1120 total. A day later, we'd see 12% of 1120, or 134 new signatures, and the day after that 150 new signatures, etc.

The number of signatures would double in little more than 6 days. And then double again in another 6 or 7 days. And so forth. At that rate, the petition would indeed reach 1 million after 2 months - give or take a few days (there will be some random variations from day to day of course).

The point is: "Exponential growth" means that the %-increase from day to day stays about the same, while the number of new signatures per day increases. If you draw a chart of such exponential growth of the Petition, it would look like this after three weeks:

The things to look for that are typical for "exponential growth": The orange curve, which is the growth rate in %, remains about steady (the line is horizontal), while the blue line, which is the number of new signatures, increases from day to day (the line rises from left to right). If you run this for 2 months, it will look something like this:

You see, the orange line remains steady, the blue line gets steeper and steeper as time goes on!

What kawika actually gets:

I have been monitoring how the petition has been developing since june 3rd. It is now past june 25th, so we have seen 21 days of new signatures. They have a total of 1,468 now. And here is the actual development:

The growth rate in % (orange line) is not steady, it dropped rapidly in the first few days, almost reached 0, and has remained near 0 since. The number of new signatures per day (blue line) has declined even more, relatively speaking. It ought to be climbing! It hovered between 1 and 15 signatures per day for the last two weeks. That's background noise at Avaaz.

To compare Dream vs. Reality so far:

kawika keeps dreaming!

Amazing, but true: Just as the petition was trickling down to almost zero, Kawika still thought the petition had "momentum". Commenting at 911Blogger on June 11th:

1403--Keep Up The Momentum
Multiply. Advertize. Share widely.

LOL. Multiply they do. Unfortunately, the number of new signatures per day has been multiplying by only something like 0.75 each day.

(Update june 25th:) There has not been another comment on this failed petition since june 11th. But they set up another one on change.org ... I may blog about that at a later time.

Conclusion (FINAL)

Those truthers who expect their petitions and news and everything to go viral, grow exponentially, gain momentum, have impact, are seriously out of contact with reality. As with many of the irrelevant petitions at Avaaz and other platforms, such initiatives loose steam only days after they are first announced and spread. It appears that the Truth Movement cannot muster more than a few thousand individuals world-wide to even fill out a form on the internet.

Interestingly, this Avaaz petition has been "liked" on Facebook 580 times, twittered 75 times and forwarded by email almost 90 times, according to the Avaaz page (as of june 25th). It appears that these means of viral marketing haven't had a great impact.

I predict a continuation of this trend: Fewer and fewer new signatures every day, instead of exponential growth.

Update june 25th: I made the prediction after june 7th. It has been true on each of the three days since. Since then there have never been more than 14 signatures per day, and, on average, less than 6 per day, with small fluctuations. That's basically hugging the flat line at zero. It will struggle to reach 1500 before the end of june, and eventually fade out completely.

I won't update this blog post any longer, unless something dramatic happens.