Talk:Potassium chlorate

Papal Conclave

Reference #10 has a link to a New York Times article that contains no evidence to support the following text:

Since 2005, a cartridge with potassium chlorate mixed with lactose and rosin is used for generating the white smoke signaling the election of new pope by a papal conclave.

Does anyone know where this "information" came from?

Probably the arse of the person who made up lots of the other unsourced "information" in this article, like the "often combined with silver fulminate" thing. Silver fulminate is a primary high explosive that can detonate from friction just fine without an oxidizer. It detonates under its own weight in quantities of 10s of milligrams, FFS. The whole "High school and college laboratories often use potassium chlorate to generate oxygen gas" part is grade A bullshit too. For high schools, keeping a bunch of liquid oxygen around isn't as good an idea because most of the time the teachers are as clueless as the students and have no business handling such things, and it's not a justifiable expense. There are much easier and safer ways to do this that involve no heating. KMnO4 + H2O2 is the usual, although it may need an ice bath it isn't going do anything worse than steam and splatter if you don't use one so it's safe in the kind of fume hood a high school has. Colleges are a multi-trillion dollar profit farm and I doubt there's a university left in any first world country that has a department that uses oxygen without its own LOX tank outside of every building that needs it. When I did the inventory for our high school's lab we didn't have any chlorates at all, and we had 2lbs of white phosphorous welded into a rusty metal can and 2.5L of concentrated perchloric acid FFS.

I'm going to go wipe out the unsourced stuff that seems massively wrong to me from experience. It's up to the person adding things to prove them, not vice versa, and I'm tired of seeing legacy incorrect information accumulate thanks to completely content-free sources like the papal article being used as sources and nobody reading them. --A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 05:25, 20 August 2024 (UTC)

Longan trees

So the last point in the introduction is true, it does seem to boost flower yields in Longan trees. But is this appropriate for the introduction? Larryisgood (talk) 15:28, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Impurity levels

One gram seems an awful lot of chlorate to test for detonation! One-tenth of a gram (roughly the point of a spatula) seems safer: this is still enough to seem detonation, but not sufficient for the explosion to be too harmful... Physchim62 (talk) 09:46, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll second that - in the lab I once used a gram of the substance, and was left with one fewer crucible than I started with... Nuclear12321 (talk) 19:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Catalyst vs. Oxidizer

I changed oxidizer to catalyst when describing the role of manganese dioxide in the decomposition of potassium chlorate. --71.227.190.111 22:43, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Welding

Perhaps some information shlould be added in regards to potassium chlorate's welding applications. Solidox, etc.

Chlorates with Sulfur

The first rule about fireworks is never mix sulfur compounds with chlorates. They avoid this like the plague. You aren't even suppost to use certain gums as binders because of the fact there are small traces of sulfur. Since this process can produce small ammounts of acid and also the sulfur may contain a very light ammount of acid.

Solubility in water

This article states, "Potassium chlorate's insolubility means it is easy to separate from soluble contaminants..."

However, as stated on the silver chlorate page (among others I'm sure) ",Like all chlorates, [silver chlorate] is water soluble."

I believe that all chlorates are soluble, but I haven't changed it.

I'll second that. You can buy this compound in the form of small white pills for use as 'oxygenating tablets for small bowls or aquariums. Supa Aquatic Suppliers Ltd. Sheffield, UK sells them. It appears to dissolve in water when I tried them. See link supa-aquatics.co.uk I'll change the article line.

--Quatermass (talk) 19:09, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

With Gummy Bears

Potassium Chlorate and Gummy Bear —Preceding unsigned comment added by Avitor (talk • contribs) 01:41, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Melting Point

Looking at various websites, the melting point is listed as 368C, not 356C. Does the melting point have a source listed? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.173.196.7 (talk) 18:11, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

NFPA Code

Is there some sort of reference for the NFPA code given in the article I could use? According to Wolfram Alpha, the code is different, so I am curious which is more accurate.

Also, just out of curiosity, why is there a reference in the article to an article about the Pope? Nuclear12321 (talk) 23:08, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

I found 5 different SDSes with 5 different NFPA codes, AFAICT either the NFPA is running a scam and changing them constantly to force people to keep paying them or the chem suppliers are just making them up as they go. Sometimes two different product numbers of the same compound from fisher (maybe ACS grade and tech grade) have different NFPA diamonds but the same purity. There seems to be no public definitive source for the ratings so I just pull an SDS from fisher and try to go with what "feels" right when I'm editing... I'm tempted to just start removing them entirely, they're not very useful to the reader since they were meant for firefighters as a snap identification of hazard level thing and basically nothing else. The numbers often make no sense whatsoever in terms of the mouseover descriptions. The GHS pictograms are far more useful since you can mouse over them and see what they mean and get a decent idea of how bad something is by the sheer wall of both sets you get on really hazardous stuff, and combined with the PEL / REL numbers you can get a good picture that makes far more sense than the fire diamonds. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 16:57, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Not like the PEL / REL are perfect either, since they're workplace limit values (not really as relevant for people handling them rarely) and known cumulative potential carcinogens like Chromium (VI) compounds automatically have extremely low PEL / REL levels to account for a long-term exposure at that level. Ammonium dichromate for example has a PEL of 0.005 mg/m³... whereas anhydrous hydrazine is 1.3 mg/m³. Handling ammonium dichromate with a half face mask and cartridges isn't a real issue, but nobody goes near hydrazine without a metallized chemical proof SCUBA suit on. Some things, like potassium chlorate, are lacking PEL / REL values entirely from what I could find despite being pretty toxic and even somewhat cumulatively so... it elevates methemoglobin levels like organic nitrates and various other toxins and the effects can be delayed by a few hours. It takes the body a while to convert this back into regular hemoglobin (the kind that can actually deliver oxygen to tissues) so if you're working with it all day and your skin starts turning blue it's time to hit the hospital... the blue skin shows up before any of the nasty symptoms IIRC. Luckily it can be treated pretty easily by the current quack miracle cure of the week (Methylene blue, probably the only thing it's actually good for) and probably other things. A Shortfall Of Gravitas (talk) 18:10, 20 January 2026 (UTC)

Assessment comment

The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Potassium chlorate/CommentsTalk:Potassium chlorate/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

Nobody has mentioned Claude Louis Berthollet as an Inventor of a the substance

Last edited at 02:54, 14 August 2007 (UTC). Substituted at 03:17, 30 April 2016 (UTC)