[darkrid3r]

Hello everyone,

I am in Canada, and am working on a colored fire project. Having a hell of a time here with some things. Im going to search the forums too, but here it is.
I am by no means a chemist, just a guy working on a cool project..

First were working with Isopropyl alcohol, and making this in a gel. Which I can pickup locally for cheep, 25 cdn for 1 US gal, locally.
Some of the other things I cant get, or are stupid expensive like ethanol.
The reason we want to make this into a gel is for safety. Yes I can buy ethanol gel in a fondu type can, but the price is over the top for the volume I need. The project will be an hour from the nearest fire station so we need to deal with our own containment. I am checking into this, and from my testing so far, (on less than 1/4 cup of alch, i can put it out with water)

THE PROJECT:
To create 4 columns with a bowl on top, 5 foot by 5 foot 10 feet in the air, the bowl should hold 5+ gallons of gel fuel and color agent and burn for hours (haven't figured out burn times yet, or how much actual fuel I need)
(Red, Yellow, Purple, Green)

We are using Borax to make green, this will be tested soon (Sunday the 3rd actually). Because we can get it locally.
If I want any pure type chems, they are stupid hard to get here, and I dont understand why, but I will keep searching.

The following we need or are having trouble with:
We would like to make a simple red, so if you have any ideas that would be great
Yellow we can make with table salt, if you know of a way to make a brighter....
Purple would be nice to have

One of our issues is the smoke or whatever toxicity this fire will produce. If we have to go higher than 10 feet please let me know, there will be people down wind of these things at all times, they will be in the center of a festival.

Step1
Use Calcium Carbonate and vinegar in a 1 to 4 solution to make Calcium Acetate.
Step2
Use calcium acetate in a 1 to 9 with Isopropyl alcohol, (will be tested on Saturday the 2nd) in a very small batch.
Step3 (test1)
Measure Gel by weight, mix in borax by weight and burn to test. Increase borax in test 2 to see if it burns greener.

Any help would be fantastic.
Regards,
Darkrid3r

[Arkcon]

Here are the typical flame colorants:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colored_fire#Flame_colorants  The metal is usually responsible for the color, and the rest usually (but not always) has minimal effect.  So you can try other salts of calcium, or sodium.  Weingart (he's one of the canonical granddaddies of pyrotechnics) report that the human eye isn't as sensitive to purple as it is to other colors, so violet and purple tent to "wash out" when viewed next to other colors.  Otherwise you'd be able to mix red and blue to get purple flame.

[darkrid3r]

Thanks for the reply, yes it seems some colors are easier to make than others. I have been playing with table salt because it a house hold. The plan is to play with borax on Sunday.

I made isopropyl alcohol based gel with calcium acetate, its quite nice to work with.
My gel would water down a bit, so I decided to dry the calcium acetate instead of leaving it in slurry form. Going to test this today.

I cut open a battery hoping to find lithium, but all i found was a grey paste, and it did not burn.

[darkrid3r]

So dry or wet the calcium acetate does not gel quite enough, you can see clear dots of jelly in the cup, but nothing solid. The one I created previous was so thick that I could flip the cup upside now.

Now to create my calcium acetate I am using regular black board chalk and vinigar, 1/4 cup chalk with 1 cup vinigar. Is this ok?
Second: I suspect that the chalk is an inferior form of Calcium Carbonate, or has additives in it. Was going to try Tums or another antacid type product that should be USP type pure. Thoughts?

Second, we dont have boric acid here, (at least not in the box of borax) its like um, boron tetra-hydrate or something. Will try and find a roach killer that has boric acid in it.

Another thing is that in a lot of chemicals here in Canada, the official ingredients are not listed on the bottle. In a lot of cases it says call poison control.

for fuel:
Isopropyl alcohol and methanol so far.
Ethanol is harder to find.

From my understanding. De-Natured Alcohol is Ethanol with Methanol added to make it poison and undrinkable is this correct?
This De-Natured Alcohol I should be able to get at the paint store?

Chemicals are proving a very difficult thing to procure here, other than house hold stuff that I can get a home depot, canadian tire, PV mart, UFA etc. I have a call planned for the firework association soon

[darkrid3r]

More road blocks on procuring chemicals in Canada, so far no one will sell to an individual.

I can order from China....and get 25 kilos no issues sigh....

Going to keep looking, and potentially will only do a single color this year, if I have to order bulk.