Title: Can anyone show me a controlled demolition company that uses Thermate? Source:
None URL Source:http://None Published:Jul 1, 2006 Author:Self Post Date:2006-07-01 17:55:03 by Critter Keywords:None Views:3312 Comments:98
I find only that RDX is used in controlled demolitions. I can't find any link between thermite, or thermate and controlled demolition except on pages discussing 9/11.
Fed:Thermite nasty stuff, but like fertiliser has legitimate use
AAP General News (Australia); 9/23/2004
AAP General News (Australia)
09-23-2004
Fed:Thermite nasty stuff, but like fertiliser has legitimate use
CANBERRA, Sept 23 AAP - The Anarchist's Cookbook describes thermite as nasty stuff and, like ammonium nitrate fertiliser which has been used to fuel car bombs, it has entirely legitimate uses.
Thermite is a mixture of powdered aluminium and iron oxide, or rust.
It burns at spectacularly high temperatures, as hot as 3,500 degrees Celsius, which is hot enough to melt steel.
That makes thermite particularly useful for welding. It is most commonly used to join the ends of railway lines.
Because the basic ingredients are so readily available, anyone with the inclination could produce their own thermite, aided by some very basic internet research.
However, it is relatively difficult to ignite and requires an ignition source much hotter that a cigarette lighter, for example.
Magnesium ribbon fuse appears to be the recommended method to ignite the substance.
There has been at least one workshop mishap in Australia where the use of a bench grinder produced the ingredients for a thermite reaction with the resulting fireball leaving the operator with serious burns.
Thermite is used in hand grenades and charges for military demolitions.
The US AN-M14 TH3 incendiary hand grenade contains about half a kilogram of a thermite compound called thermate.
I'm looking for an instance where it was/is used for controlled demolition. The latest theory basically claims that it is commonly used for the purpose, yet I don't find mention of that anywhere except in articles related to this latest theory.
Like I said, I just like to double check things. :)
Nor can I find any military or defense suppliers of thermite cutting charges (or lances or rods for that matter). For example, goto http://www.the-dma.org.uk/Products/main.asp?Start=T which lists defense products and if you scroll to "thermite cutting charges" and click you get no manufacturers found.
Now it may be that information on where to get "thermite cutting charges" has been supressed in recent years, and maybe the military gets their own made up special and outside GSA-procurment, but legitimate commercial applications ought to still be listed if there were any (similar to those for welding) but there seemingly are none.
I find this troublesome for the latest theories.
Agreed.
There seems to be a lot of hypothetical presumption about "thermite cutting charges" and I've looked for the BYU professors paper on his thermite research and findings but it doesn't seem to be available yet (I don't mean his general paper http://www. physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html but supposedly he has a newer paper specifically "proving" the use of thermite). His general chemistry & physics seem to be in order, assuming "thermite cutting charges" are real items available commercially or militarily, but as mentioned above, I can't find any.
My simple understanding of the thermite reaction is that it is difficult to ignite and its reaction rate is not precisely controllable, which would seem to make it unreliable for controlled demolition wherein the timing of cutting through support beams and columns must be thorough and exact to a second or two, otherwise the structure won't collapse as planned. As the thermite reaction is also a slower burning rather than an explosion, it's cutting direction is downward where ever gravity pulls the 'molten thermite' (see http://www. amazingrust.com/Experiments/how_to/Thermite_pics-videos.html) which means making thermite cut laterally across vertical support columns (orthogonal to gravitational pull) instead of dripping/running down the sides would seem to add great difficulty to controlled demolition.
While "thermite cutting charges" provide plausible explanations for some of the WTC collapse phenomena, it also introduces some new complications, namely procurring said charges, installing them, and triggering them precisely. Whereas regular demolitions are procurable and triggerable, but still need to be placed/ installed without notice.
Thanks for a very informative post. I pretty much found the same things.
I don't know what to make of the professor's work now.
I also checked another allegation made that the presence of sulfur can be very simply explained since all the sheetrock in the building contained a high sulfur content. I verified this at various internet sources.
Boulderdash! If sulfur in drywall did this to the WTC buildings, where is all the other evidence of this sulfur erosion in all other fires in highrise buildings and homes and almost every structure in the US?
December 2001: Scientific Journal Describes 'Eutectic Mixture' in WTC Steel
A sample of WTC steel eroded and corroded due to eutectic formations. [Source: FEMA]
The Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (JOM) reports that the examination of a beam from the remains of WTC Building 7—which collapsed late in the afternoon of 9/11 (see (5:20 p.m.))—has revealed "unexpected erosion" of the steel.
The article states: "The formation of the eutectic mixture of iron oxide and iron sulfide lowers the temperature at which liquid can form in this steel. This strongly suggests that the temperatures in this region of the steel beam approached around 1,000�C, forming the eutectic liquid by a process similar to making a 'blacksmith's weld' in a hand forge." [Barnett, Biederman, and Sisson, 12/2001]
The New York Times will call this "perhaps the deepest mystery uncovered in the investigation." [New York Times, 2/2/2002] FEMA's World Trade Center Building Performance Study, released in May 2002 (see May 1, 2002), will add that the same "unusual erosion patterns" have been observed in a sample of the remaining structural steel from one of the twin towers. It will state, "This sulfur-rich liquid penetrated preferentially down grain boundaries of the steel, severely weakening the beam and making it susceptible to erosion." FEMA is unable to explain this phenomenon, saying, "The severe corrosion and subsequent erosion ... are a very unusual event. No clear explanation for the source of the sulfur has been identified. ...
It is possible that this is the result of long-term heating in the ground following the collapse of the buildings. It is also possible that the phenomenon started prior to collapse and accelerated the weakening of the steel structure." [Federal Emergency Management Agency, 5/1/2002, pp. C-1 - C-13]
Despite FEMA's call for further research, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) will make no mention of the eutectic formations in its final report into the WTC collapses, released in late 2005, following its three-year investigation. [National Institute of Standards and Technology, 9/2005 ]