Why Didn't the WTC Fires Ignite AE911's Supposed "Nanothermite"?

[Mick West]

The conspiracy-oriented group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth claims there is lots of evidence the the World Trade Center towers were brought down by a complex sequence of pre-planned demolition charges using a silent yet powerful classified explosive substance capable of precisely cutting steel beams in half and then throwing them hundreds of feet in the air. They call this "nanothermite".

An obvious problem with this theory is the huge fires that burned for an hour before the buildings collapsed. Why didn't the fires set off the nanothermite?

AE911 attempts to answer this in their FAQ, mentioning the ignition of nanothermite in the detailed answer to FAQ #2:

FAQ #2: WHAT ABOUT THE PLANES THAT SLAMMED INTO THE TWIN TOWERS? WOULDN’T THEY HAVE DISTURBED THE DEMOLITION DEVICES?
Some of the demolition devices were undoubtedly disturbed by the plane impacts, but not enough to prevent the rest of the devices from performing adequately. Even the NIST report states that the collapse of the North Tower started on a floor with fairly minor structural damage. A more detailed answer is available here.

Content from External Source

The linked article continues:

Second, a demolition using advanced nano-thermite material (which has been identified in the World Trade Center dust) may help to explain why the fires started by the planes did not set off explosive devices. As explained by Dr. Steven Jones:

“It is important to note that initiating the thermite reaction requires temperatures well above those achieved by burning jet fuel or office materials — which is an advantage of using thermite charges over conventional monomolecular explosives such as TNT, RDX and PETN. Below is a photograph of an experiment performed by the author and colleagues at BYU in which a sample of thermite was heated to orange-hot temperature (about [927°C] 1700ºF ). We demonstrated that the thermite reaction would not ignite at this high temperature. Later, the thermite reaction was triggered by burning a magnesium strip in contact with the thermite...."

Content from External Source

So the argument is that the fires were simply not hot enough to ignite the thermite.

The article linked by "identified in the World Trade Center dust" goes on to say:

Iron oxide and aluminum are the ingredients of classic thermite, an incendiary that burns unusually hot at approximately 4500°F, producing aluminum oxide and molten iron. The carbon content of the matrix indicates the presence of an organic substance.

When the red/gray chips were heated to about 430° C. (806° F.), they ignited, releasing relatively large amounts of energy very fast. This behavior matches “fairly closely an independent observation on a known super-thermite sample”

Content from External Source

Hence AE911 is making contradictory claims. They say they found nanothermite in samples of dust that ignites at 430°C, but simultaneously claim that the nanothermite would have survived the fires because it does not ignite at 927°C, more than twice as hot.

 

[Oystein]

The contradiction can be easily resolved:

They used TWO or more different thermite preparations, of which the red-gray chips that ignite at about 430 °C*​ are only one kind**​. The authors have variously claimed post-publication that this red-gray material may not be from the explosive charges (they are never even described as being "explosive"), but perhaps "fuses" or "nano-matches".
Essentially this boils down to AE911truth + Jones/Harrit not committing to any testable theory, really.



*​ Except that this is not even true: the claim "When the red/gray chips were heated to about 430° C. (806° F.), they ignited" does not follow from the data it supposedly interprets. The DSC plots shown in Harrit et al 2009 are Figures 19 and 29:

This shows on the right, in red, the reaction of actual nano-thermite when heated: It starts off endotherm until about 360 °C, then exotherm reactions develop until a peak at ca. 535 °C, when specific power is roughly 5 W/g. This peak power, 5 W/g, must therefore count as "releasing relatively large amounts of energy very fast". The blue curve - one of the Harrit/Jones chips, peaks at 440 °C with ca. 10.5 W/g, but rises above zero already near 200 °C. The truthers evidently think that 10 W/g counts as "releasing relatively large amounts of energy very fast"

Now compare this to the other chips they tested:

I have added the horizontal and vertical lines.
We see that the green and black curves rise above zero very soon, and surpass 10.5 W/g at a temperature slightly below 400 °C. It is wrong to say they "ignite" at "about 430 °C", when two of the chips are already "releasing relatively large amounts of energy very fast" at temperatures below 400 °C. In fact, these two plots rise so steadily and smoothly towards their peaks that it is difficult to pinpoint where they ignite at all. This is indicative of a material that has no fixed ignition point. I'd assume this paint has a binder made from several organic materials - such as linseed oil plus resin plus whatever. What happens there is that the organic matrix decomposes by and by (is cracked into smaller molecules) as temperature increases, and the released gasses (benzene, CO, methane, H2, whatever) ignite at various rates and ignition points.

Also, when reading these DSC plots, you need to understand that the x-axis (°C) is actually equivalent to a time-scale: The samples were heated at a constant rate of 10 °C/min, and net energy flow is determined relative to an inert control probe and plotted on the y-axis. So with every 10 °C that you move to the right in the plot, a minute has passed! When, for example, the green curve exceeds 10 W/g at 400 °C, then peaks at 430 °C and 21 W/g, 3 full minutes have passed between these two events! It will go on releasing more than 10 W/g another 2 to 3 minutes. This is a tiny sample, we are talking about a chip that's 0.1 mm thin and something like 1 mm long - and it (the gree curve) burns for 5 minutes at a greater rate of energy release than the peak of the blue curve. Is this a powerful material? By no stretch of the imagination! It merely smolders peacefully!


**​ Except that the Harrit/Jones paper describes 6 (six) different kinds of chips, all of which would be "nano-thermite", or so the reader is lead to believe.

 

[Mark E Russell]

The conspiracy-oriented group Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth claims there is lots of evidence the the World Trade Center towers were brought down by a complex sequence of pre-planned demolition charges using a silent yet powerful classified explosive substance capable of precisely cutting steel beams in half and then throwing them hundreds of feet in the air. They call this "nanothermite".

An obvious problem with this theory is the huge fires that burned for an hour before the buildings collapsed. Why didn't the fires set off the nanothermite?

AE911 attempts to answer this in their FAQ, mentioning the ignition of nanothermite in the detailed answer to FAQ #2:

FAQ #2: WHAT ABOUT THE PLANES THAT SLAMMED INTO THE TWIN TOWERS? WOULDN’T THEY HAVE DISTURBED THE DEMOLITION DEVICES?
Some of the demolition devices were undoubtedly disturbed by the plane impacts, but not enough to prevent the rest of the devices from performing adequately. Even the NIST report states that the collapse of the North Tower started on a floor with fairly minor structural damage. A more detailed answer is available here.

Content from External Source

The linked article continues:

Second, a demolition using advanced nano-thermite material (which has been identified in the World Trade Center dust) may help to explain why the fires started by the planes did not set off explosive devices. As explained by Dr. Steven Jones:

“It is important to note that initiating the thermite reaction requires temperatures well above those achieved by burning jet fuel or office materials — which is an advantage of using thermite charges over conventional monomolecular explosives such as TNT, RDX and PETN. Below is a photograph of an experiment performed by the author and colleagues at BYU in which a sample of thermite was heated to orange-hot temperature (about [927°C] 1700ºF ). We demonstrated that the thermite reaction would not ignite at this high temperature. Later, the thermite reaction was triggered by burning a magnesium strip in contact with the thermite...."

Content from External Source

So the argument is that the fires were simply not hot enough to ignite the thermite.

The article linked by "identified in the World Trade Center dust" goes on to say:

Iron oxide and aluminum are the ingredients of classic thermite, an incendiary that burns unusually hot at approximately 4500°F, producing aluminum oxide and molten iron. The carbon content of the matrix indicates the presence of an organic substance.

When the red/gray chips were heated to about 430° C. (806° F.), they ignited, releasing relatively large amounts of energy very fast. This behavior matches “fairly closely an independent observation on a known super-thermite sample”

Content from External Source

Hence AE911 is making contradictory claims. They say they found nanothermite in samples of dust that ignites at 430°C, but simultaneously claim that the nanothermite would have survived the fires because it does not ignite at 927°C, more than twice as hot.

Just wanted to be clear if you are disputing the existence of thermite's existence at the WTC or that it was the cause of bringing down the structures. To the latter point, why didn't the thermite "go off"? As stated in the post below yours, nano thermite isn't an explosive device like a bomb, it "merely smolders peacefully".

Just some excerpts of Wikipedia's page on nanothermite to provide some context on nanothermite:

"Historically, pyrotechnic or explosive applications for traditional thermites have been limited due to their relatively slow energy release rates. Because nanothermites are created from reactant particles with proximities approaching the atomic scale, energy release rates are far greater".[1]"Effect of Al particle size on the thermal degradation of Al/teflon mixtures" (PDF). Informaworld.com. 2007-08-08. Retrieved 2010-

"Like conventional thermite, super thermite reacts at very high temperature and is difficult to extinguish." ]Brown, Mike (November 5, 2010). "Nanofibres defuse explosives". Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 2010-12-20.

As for the existence of thermitic reaction, there were hotspots that existed at ground zero for over a week after, up until at least 9/23.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/thermal.r09.html

"In addition, super thermites are very sensitive to electrostatic discharge (ESD). Surrounding the metal oxide particles with carbon nanofibers may make nanothermites safer to handle."[11]Brown, Mike (November 5, 2010). "Nanofibres defuse explosives". Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 2010-12-20.

This means that the material is so reactive that it can be set off by a static charge! Or even a laser pulse! "Nanoenergetics: An Emerging Technology Area of National Importance" (PDF). AMPTIAC Quarterly. 6 (1). Retrieved July 8, 2009._(Miziolek, Andrzej (2002).

"Because of their highly increased reaction rate, nanosized thermitic materials are being studied by the U.S. military with the aim of developing new types of bombs several times more powerful than conventional explosives.[3] Nanoenergetic materials can store more energy than conventional energetic materials and can be used in innovative ways to tailor the release of this energy. Thermobaric weapons are one potential application of nanoenergetic
materials.[4]" (ibid)
If you go on to look at thermobaric weapons, it goes on to describe Fuel Air Explosives, which "consists of a container of fuel and two separate explosive charges. After the munition is dropped or fired, the first explosive charge bursts open the container at a predetermined height and disperses the fuel in a cloud that mixes with atmospheric oxygen (the size of the cloud varies with the size of the munition). The cloud of fuel flows around objects and into structures. The second charge then detonates the cloud, creating a massive blast wave. The blast wave destroys reinforced buildings and equipment and kills and injures people. The antipersonnel effect of the blast wave is more severe in foxholes and tunnels, and in enclosed spaces, such as bunkers and caves." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermobaric_weapon)

In this way one could effectively ignite thermitic material, creating lots of smoke from the "smoldering process" as previously confirmed, and have another explosive charge to ignite the highly explosive cloud that filled up the WTC, which would have severely weakened the building structure combined with the thermitic material hot enough to melt steel.

Heres a brief snippet of a documentary on the military's development of thermobaric weapons:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUB2nYz6USo

 

[deirdre]

"Like conventional thermite, super thermite reacts at very high temperature and is difficult to extinguish." ]Brown, Mike (November 5, 2010). "Nanofibres defuse explosives". Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 2010-12-20.

you realize all your nano links are almost a decade after 9/11 happened?

according to your above link they would have been pretty unstable in 2001, no?

Researchers have used carbon nanofibres to separate components of a highly sensitive explosive system to make it much safer to use.

...
The two components react in a very exothermic reaction, meaning the systems have potential applications as propulsion for rockets, explosives, or as pyrotechnic initiators. However, the mixtures are very sensitive so are difficult to handle in the lab, transport and integrate into systems that are going to be deployed elsewhere safely

Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 2010-12-20

Content from External Source

 

[Keith Beachy]

...
As for the existence of thermitic reaction, there were hotspots that existed at ground zero for over a week after, up until at least 9/23.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2001/ofr-01-0429/thermal.r09.html
...

None of the hot spots were due to thermite, they were too "cold" to be thermite - the hot spots were the contents of the WTC, over 220 acres of office junk, cars, tires, plastic paper burning for weeks. No one planted thermite, and thermite was not used on 9/11 by the 10 terrorists in the two 767s.

More to the point this is the irony of 9/11 truth, wanting to have some secret military nano-thermite that did 9/11, but they can't explain who did it, how it was done, or why.

Hence AE911 is making contradictory claims. They say they found nanothermite in samples of dust that ignites at 430°C, but simultaneously claim that the nanothermite would have survived the fires because it does not ignite at 927°C, more than twice as hot.

Big problem with 9/11, no valid evidence, failed logic. In the thermite paper they found iron, and aluminum in WTC dust, claim it was thermite (Fe, Al, the two most common elements in the earth's crust, and all over the WTC in stuff found in the WTC, even paint, coatings, etc). The 19 terrorists used planes, and the biggest office fire in history started with 120,000 pounds of jet fuel to cause, most likely a collapse they did not anticipate. No need for thermite, the heat energy in the jet fuel was greater than 630 tons of thermite (which did not cause the collapse - how much thermite was used in the fantasy version 9/11 truth can't define or defend with evidence), and the office fires up to the collapse had the heat energy of over 2,700 Tons of thermite (bringing thermite is like bringing 9/11 truth's knife cutting through butter to a gunfight). The contents of the WTC, were equal to more heat energy than 2,700 tons of thermite. Plastic burns with more heat energy than thermite, as does paper. The ruse of thermite is based on the false belief fire can't cause a building to collapse. It defies logic, why do we insulate steel so it can survive various time frames in an out of control fire, or why install water systems to suppress fire in steel buildings. With AE911 nonsense of thermite/CD, how do Flight 77 and Flight 93 work in the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP) 9/11 truth has never explained. Where is the logic and evidence for 9/11 truth claims of thermite.

Two Thumbs up for the Opening Post.

 

[Mark E Russell]

you realize all your nano links are almost a decade after 9/11 happened?

according to your above link they would have been pretty unstable in 2001, no?

Researchers have used carbon nanofibres to separate components of a highly sensitive explosive system to make it much safer to use.

...
The two components react in a very exothermic reaction, meaning the systems have potential applications as propulsion for rockets, explosives, or as pyrotechnic initiators. However, the mixtures are very sensitive so are difficult to handle in the lab, transport and integrate into systems that are going to be deployed elsewhere safely

Chemistry World. Royal Society of Chemistry. Retrieved 2010-12-20

Content from External Source

True it would have been very unstable pre 2001. Its actually proving difficult to find any published journals documenting nano thermite pre 2001; I did find one 2007 study that points to a study by "Martin et. Al" in their intro stating several years ago they discovered the smaller the particles are the faster they react, but not much more detail than that: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.24915.
As a side note, thermobaric weapons have been well documented as being used by militaries since the 1960s. But as for nanothermite sources pre 2001, they are surprisingly scarce. In at least one of the sources I posted they refer to nanothermite being studied "since the 1990s" but nothing more concrete than that...

 

[Oystein]

Just wanted to be clear if you are disputing the existence of thermite's existence at the WTC or that it was the cause of bringing down the structures.

Neither. Mick's point is that AE911Truth is making contradicting claims about a property (the ignition point) of the thermite speculated to have been used at the speculative demolition of the WTC buildings.

To the latter point, why didn't the thermite "go off"? As stated in the post below yours, nano thermite isn't an explosive device like a bomb, it "merely smolders peacefully".

AE911Truth is vague and ambiguous about whether or not the speculative nano-thermite at the WTC ought to be thought of as an incendiary, and explosive formulation, or both. The latter would be pretty much an oxymoron, but the best reading, IMO, of what AE911Truth wishes to plant into their donor's minds.

As for the existence of thermitic reaction, there were hotspots that existed at ground zero for over a week after, up until at least 9/23.

These temperatures are indicative of ordinary fires, smouldering underground near the surface, and sometimes burning clean on the surface. This interpretation is infinitely more plausible than any fantasies about thermite. The reason: Thermite has a very LOW energy / heat content compared to ordinary building contents such as furniture, computers, cables, carpets, paper or even humans (deceased). It can develop high temperatures locally only when and because it burns fast - within seconds. After that, the temperature rapidly dissipates. There would have to be unrealistic amounts of thermite to keep the hotspots hot for as long as a week.

Nanoenergetic materials can store more energy than conventional energetic materials

This is plain FALSE, and the exact opposite is truer: Nanomaterials, specifically nanothermite with Al as fuel, can store LESS energy than conventional thermite, as a direct result of nano-sizing the fuel particles: Because the surface:volume ratio increases as particle size decreases, a higher percentage of the Al-particles oxidizes on the surface in the nano-thermite preparations. As a result, nano-thermite experimetally is found to release only 1 - 1.5 kJ/g of energy, compared to the almost 4 kJ/g that thermite should theoretically release. I don't know numbers for experimental conventional thermite, but should be above 3 kJ/g. Compare this to 18 kJ/g for fire wood, or 40+ kJ/g for jet fuel.

 

[Fromage]

This is plain FALSE, and the exact opposite is truer: Nanomaterials, specifically nanothermite with Al as fuel, can store LESS energy than conventional thermite, as a direct result of nano-sizing the fuel particles: Because the surface:volume ratio increases as particle size decreases, a higher percentage of the Al-particles oxidizes on the surface in the nano-thermite preparations. As a result, nano-thermite experimetally is found to release only 1 - 1.5 kJ/g of energy, compared to the almost 4 kJ/g that thermite should theoretically release. I don't know numbers for experimental conventional thermite, but should be above 3 kJ/g. Compare this to 18 kJ/g for fire wood, or 40+ kJ/g for jet fuel.

"Regular" thermite is around 3-4kJ/g. All that nano-sizing the aluminum does is make the thermite reaction go faster, but the total energy output is lower. Weight-per-weight, you need twice as much regular thermite as steel to melt it. With nano-thermite it'd be 4-5 times as much as the steel. Nano-thermite (as is also true of powdered aluminum alone) is more used in "pyro" as a burn modifier. For example, aluminum powder of various grades is used in AP (ammonium perchorate oxidizer based rocket fuels) to speed up or heat up the reaction, or introduce pyro colour effects. Amateur rocket enthusiasts like to have flame/smoke effects.

There is another fairly obvious feature of thermite that makes it effectively impossible to have been used in the WTC collapse. Because the thermite reaction is relatively slow and un-energetic, it takes quite a bit of time (5-10 seconds plus) to melt/cut structural-steel as used in building structure. Nano-thermite would be similar - it'd burn faster, but the heat energy production is lower. Nor would the time be precisely constant from one charge versus another. In order to simulate the progressive collapse, they would need dozens (if not hundreds) of charges per floor, each floor's charges would have to proceed from ignition to melt in perfect synchronicity, and each floor's "melt time" staggered to an accuracy of something on the order of 10s or 100s of milliseconds relative to each other. If you couldn't accomplish that, the deviations would become obvious in the collapse. Secondly, thermite reactions are blindingly bright and long-lived compared to a classical explosive - even well inside the building, even sheathed in smoke, the glare would blindingly (pun intended) obvious.

As a "demolition material", thermite is really only useful in situations where individual timing doesn't matter (single charges, or C/D that only needs a few members to not-necessarily go simultaneously), and you don't want to deal with traditional explosives (for blast containment, noise or dust). Only conventional explosives (or verinage-style gravitational collapse where possible) has the synchronization capabilities required by large scale complex C/D.

 

[Fromage]

True it would have been very unstable pre 2001. Its actually proving difficult to find any published journals documenting nano thermite pre 2001; I did find one 2007 study that points to a study by "Martin et. Al" in their intro stating several years ago they discovered the smaller the particles are the faster they react, but not much more detail than that: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.24915.
As a side note, thermobaric weapons have been well documented as being used by militaries since the 1960s. But as for nanothermite sources pre 2001, they are surprisingly scarce. In at least one of the sources I posted they refer to nanothermite being studied "since the 1990s" but nothing more concrete than that...

If truth be told, I suspect it's more a matter of terminology, intended use, and just plain "old (proprietary|craftman's) lore". Al-Iron oxide thermite (any kind) isn' t a heck of a lot of use as a weapon, because it's relatively slow and relatively un-energetic. Doesn't detonate, doesn't produce a lot of gas by itself, just makes an object it's in contact with very hot. thermite has been used for a very long time for repair castings and welding rails and so on. I'm sure the manufacturers of "Brand X welding compound" experimented mightily with the grain size of the aluminum they used, because it directly affects how effective/optimal it is for the purpose. These were fairly small companies, with a variety of preferred sources for aluminum. I'm sure that much of it was more "nano" than the usual made with body-filler grade aluminum dust.

Aluminum powders (along with many other metals, including titanium etc) have been used for decades (if not centuries some metals) in pyrotechnics. Where the oxidizer might be AN, AP or something else. They're used as burn rate modifiers (aluminum makes APCP go faster for example) or special effects. Titanium not only makes the burn go faster, it produces glorious showers of sparks. You want a solid rocket motor that goes blue, red, black and sparky (I love seeing big sparkies fly), or pretty firework colours? it's almost certainly due to one metal or another,

By way of demonstrating that nano aluminum was used in pyro, consider the Shuttle SRBs: ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.6% by weight), atomized aluminium powder (fuel, 16%), iron oxide (catalyst, 0.4%), PBAN (binder, also acts as fuel, 12.04%), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96%) [from Wikipedia]. Solid rocket propellant (such as the SRBs) made with AP and some sort of fuels are called Ammonium perchlorate Composite Propellant (APCP). But it's also a "thermite". APCP with PBAN (or HTPB or some random epoxy) alone works just fine as a rocket fuel (amateur rocket engine makers use it all the time). The aluminum powder makes it go much more energetically. Amateurs rocketry people tend to stay away from it because the propulsion equations are more difficult, and knowing exactly what aluminum powder you're getting is not so easy, and getting it wrong means your engine chamber ruptures.

Oh, and yes, the Germans were playing around with thermobarics during WWII, but the project took so long that they were only able to use it a very few times. There have been books written about supposed nuclear bomb tests at Ohrdruf, but, the explanation really seems to be that they were tests of very large thermobaric weapons with concentration camp inmates as "test subjects".

 

[Fromage]

True it would have been very unstable pre 2001. Its actually proving difficult to find any published journals documenting nano thermite pre 2001; I did find one 2007 study that points to a study by "Martin et. Al" in their intro stating several years ago they discovered the smaller the particles are the faster they react, but not much more detail than that: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/1.24915.
As a side note, thermobaric weapons have been well documented as being used by militaries since the 1960s. But as for nanothermite sources pre 2001, they are surprisingly scarce. In at least one of the sources I posted they refer to nanothermite being studied "since the 1990s" but nothing more concrete than that...

If truth be told, I suspect it's more a matter of terminology, intended use, and just plain "old (proprietary|craftman's) lore". Al-Iron oxide thermite (any kind) isn' t a heck of a lot of use as a weapon, because it's relatively slow and relatively un-energetic. Doesn't detonate, doesn't produce a lot of gas by itself, just makes an object it's in contact with very hot. thermite has been used for a very long time for repair castings and welding rails and so on. I'm sure the manufacturers of "Brand X welding compound" experimented mightily with the grain size of the aluminum they used, because it directly affects how effective/optimal it is for the purpose. These were fairly small companies, with a variety of preferred sources for aluminum. I'm sure that much of it was more "nano" than the usual made with body-filler grade aluminum dust.

Aluminum powders (along with many other metals, including titanium etc) have been used for decades (if not centuries some metals) in pyrotechnics. Where the oxidizer might be AN, AP or something else. They're used as burn rate modifiers (aluminum makes APCP go faster for example) or special effects. Titanium not only makes the burn go faster, it produces glorious showers of sparks. You want a solid rocket motor that goes blue, red, black and sparky (I love seeing big sparkies fly), or pretty firework colours? it's almost certainly due to one metal or another,

By way of demonstrating that nano aluminum was used in pyro, consider the Shuttle SRBs: ammonium perchlorate (oxidizer, 69.6% by weight), atomized aluminium powder (fuel, 16%), iron oxide (catalyst, 0.4%), PBAN (binder, also acts as fuel, 12.04%), and an epoxy curing agent (1.96%) [from Wikipedia]. Solid rocket propellant (such as the SRBs) made with AP and some sort of fuels are called Ammonium perchlorate Composite Propellant (APCP). But it's also a "thermite". APCP with PBAN (or HTPB or some random epoxy) alone works just fine as a rocket fuel (amateur rocket engine makers use it all the time). The aluminum powder makes it go much more energetically. Amateurs rocketry people tend to stay away from it because the propulsion equations are more difficult, and knowing exactly what aluminum powder you're getting is not so easy, and getting it wrong means your engine chamber ruptures.

Oh, and yes, the Germans were playing around with thermobarics during WWII, but the project took so long that they were only able to use it a very few times. There have been books written about supposed nuclear bomb tests at Ohrdruf, but, the explanation really seems to be that they were tests of very large thermobaric weapons with concentration camp inmates as "test subjects".

 

[Oystein]

All these uses of metal fuels together with oxidizers have little to nothing to do with the "Nanothermite" that is mentioned in the thread title: AE911T claims that a specific material, tested by Steven Jones and his minions, is a "nano-thermitic" materials with properties that somehow are useful - and were used - in a huge yet stealthy building implosion.

This material, they are quite explicit here, contains the elements C, O, Fe, Al, Si - and at most traces of other chemical elements (plus probably H, which would be invisible to the test methods). They claim that the C and some of the O probably constitute some organic material, while the Fe is F2O3 and the Al is elemental. This leaves Si as the only other element other than C, O, H that is not yet accounted for. No one has suggested any chemistry where Si, along with O and possibly C, makes for a plausible oxidizer.
There is no possibility of there being AP.
The explicit claim is that Fe2O3 is the oxidizer, and that it oxidizes the elemental Al in the classical thermite reaction.

So any and all other uses and studies of other "thermitic" pyrotechnics miss the topic here.

It is claimed that the organic material plus embedded "Nanothermite" is not stable past 430 °C, and at the same time it is claimed that charges of this material survived the fires until they were fired in some controlled manner to effect the WTC collapses.

 

[Fromage]

This material, they are quite explicit here, contains the elements C, O, Fe, Al, Si - and at most traces of other chemical elements (plus probably H, which would be invisible to the test methods). They claim that the C and some of the O probably constitute some organic material, while the Fe is F2O3 and the Al is elemental. This leaves Si as the only other element other than C, O, H that is not yet accounted for. No one has suggested any chemistry where Si, along with O and possibly C, makes for a plausible oxidizer.
There is no possibility of there being AP.
The explicit claim is that Fe2O3 is the oxidizer, and that it oxidizes the elemental Al in the classical thermite reaction.

I'm not suggesting that there was AP in the mix, only that while not "officially" thermitic, the chemistry of elemental aluminum at various grain sizes in pyro/thermite has been known at least at "practical" level for many decades. Perhaps not as referreed papers, but as products that were actually produced.

There are a number of issues with the Harrit report (beyond the bias of all but one of the authors). They asserted, but did not prove, the existence of elemental aluminum. X-Ray crystalography would have done that, but they didn't do that test.

The spectrum of the material was not that much different (if at all) from standard steel primer paints. Which contains silicates (hence the Si and O, and likely the Al).

Another issue is that they performed their calorimeter test in air. Thermitic reactions don't need air. By testing a piece in air, they're unable to tell how much of the energy released was thermitic, and how much was burning something else in air. "Standard" thermite works out to about 3kJ/gm, and nanothermite would actually be less (due to binders etc), yet, they measured over 10kJ/gm. Thermite is relatively unenergetic compared to many organic-oxygen burns (JP4 is something like 40kJ/gm, even paper is over 10kJ/gm), and as such the whole thing could be explained by air-burn of the "organic matrix" they didn't evaluate and the aluminum (whatever form it was) didn't so anything with the Fe2O3.

If I remember correctly, they used Acetone to wash the material, but apparently this is a bad idea, because acetone can alter the chemistry of what you're washing, and professionals don't do this anymore.

It is claimed that the organic material plus embedded "Nanothermite" is not stable past 430 °C, and at the same time it is claimed that charges of this material survived the fires until they were fired in some controlled manner to effect the WTC collapses.

Yes, there is that.

Two more things to point out:

Thermite (of any kind) is much too slow to bring down a building in a fashion that requires simultaneous severing of posts with timings on the order of 10s of milliseconds to stage a orderly floor-by-floor collapse as the WTC exhibited. You'd be lucky to get your timing within several seconds. You need true explosives and electronic timing for this.

I should also point out that mass use of thermite (you need about 3 pounds of thermite to melt 1 pound of steel) like this would be visible as a blinding glare, visible for miles, and capable of penetrating all but the thickest debris clouds. Not a handful of teensy little puffs of smoke.

They could _almost_ make it plausible if they they claimed thermite was only on the airliner impact floors (other than it being able to ignore getting screwed up by the impacts), because the WTC didn't need pyro to collapse once a couple floors went.

 

[John85]

An obvious problem with this theory is the huge fires that burned for an hour before the buildings collapsed. Why didn't the fires set off the nanothermite?

An intriguing possibility is mentioned in The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites by Kevin Ryan. Emphasis mine:

It turns out that explosive, sol-gel nano-thermites were developed by US government scientists, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) (Tillitson et al 1998, Gash et al 2000, Gash et al 2002). These LLNL scientists reported that -- “The sol-gel process is very amenable to dip-, spin-, and spray-coating technologies to coat surfaces. We have utilized this property to dip-coat various substrates to make sol-gel Fe,O,/ Al / Viton coatings. The energetic coating dries to give a nice adherent film. Preliminary experiments indicate that films of the hybrid material are self-propagating when ignited by thermal stimulus” (Gash et al 2002). The amazing correlation between floors of impact and floors of apparent failure suggests that spray-on nano-thermite materials may have been applied to the steel components of the WTC buildings, underneath the upgraded fireproofing (Ryan 2008).

Content from External Source

http://www.journalof911studies.com/the-top-ten-connections-between-nist-and-nano-thermites/

What he's trying to draw attention to is the correlation between the floors with upgraded fireproofing and the floors impacted by airplanes. For reference:



https://kendoc911.wordpress.com/wtc-towers/wtc-ownership/

 

[Mick West]

An intriguing possibility is mentioned in The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites by Kevin Ryan. Emphasis mine:

Content from external source It turns out that explosive, sol-gel nano-thermites were developed by US government scientists, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories (LLNL) (Tillitson et al 1998, Gash et al 2000, Gash et al 2002). These LLNL scientists reported that -- “The sol-gel process is very amenable to dip-, spin-, and spray-coating technologies to coat surfaces. We have utilized this property to dip-coat various substrates to make sol-gel Fe,O,/ Al / Viton coatings. The energetic coating dries to give a nice adherent film. Preliminary experiments indicate that films of the hybrid material are self-propagating when ignited by thermal stimulus” (Gash et al 2002). The amazing correlation between floors of impact and floors of apparent failure suggests that spray-on nano-thermite materials may have been applied to the steel components of the WTC buildings, underneath the upgraded fireproofing (Ryan 2008).
http://www.journalof911studies.com/the-top-ten-connections-between-nist-and-nano-thermites/

That does not really solve the problem of self-ignition - it makes it considerably worse. There was considerable "thermal stimulus" both from the plane's impact, and from the subsequent fires. So why did the nano-thermite not ignite and "self-propagate" until it was all gone?

It's a pretty ridiculous theory on several levels. But for one there's not a lot of heat energy in a thin layer on nano-thermite. It would not really have been able to heat up the core columns much.

One could simulate it to a degree with sparklers.

 

[John85]

That does not really solve the problem of self-ignition - it makes it considerably worse. There was considerable "thermal stimulus" both from the plane's impact, and from the subsequent fires. So why did the nano-thermite not ignite and "self-propagate" until it was all gone?

It's a pretty ridiculous theory on several levels. But for one there's not a lot of heat energy in a thin layer on nano-thermite. It would not really have been able to heat up the core columns much.

One could simulate it to a degree with sparklers.

Then perhaps the thermite was applied in greater quantities than a paint job underneath fire protection. Alternatively, fire-protected charges could be bolted onto the columns. If you tasked the special forces of any country with protecting an incendiary or explosive charge from an office fire, I think they would rise to the challenge.

 

[deirdre]

from an office fire,

it wasnt an office fire. a 767 exploded.

 

[Mick West]

Then perhaps the thermite was applied in greater quantities than a paint job underneath fire protection. Alternatively, fire-protected charges could be bolted onto the columns. If you tasked the special forces of any country with protecting an incendiary or explosive charge from an office fire, I think they would rise to the challenge.

The impact of a 767 would be rather hard to protect against.

Theorizing is fine, but there really isn't any evidence of anything like that. Nor is there any need, as the impact and fire did the job.

 

[Oystein]

@John85,

the problem remains that thermite releases FAR LESS HEAT than, say, ordinary paint! By painting the steel with thermite instead of paint, and then making it burn, you actually ensure that the columns will heat up LESS. Sure, you can make the layer thicker, but you could also make the paint layer thicker, with greater effect.

Paint layers are on the order of 50 micrometers. A layer this thin, whether paint or thermite, would heat the average WTC column by under 10° C. You'd need a hundred times that much to get into "unsafe" territorry.

Another huge problem: Steel was recovered and identified from the fire floors - none showed any evidence of havin been painted with anything other than paint. All of the steel has been looked at at least cursorily, and had any columns actually been attacked by such a thermite layer, it would have been an unusual sight and been noticed and examined.


What Kevin Ryan however implicitly admits is that what they were looking at seems to have been PAINTED on the steel. Which is easy to explain: It was, in fact, paint. Even the "active thermitic chips" they found had the typical paint thickness around 50 micrometers, which is totally safe for steel thus painted no matter how energetic the material might be.
All the rest, he tells an invented just-so story.

 

[Oystein]

Then perhaps the thermite was applied in greater quantities than a paint job underneath fire protection. Alternatively, fire-protected charges could be bolted onto the columns. If you tasked the special forces of any country with protecting an incendiary or explosive charge from an office fire, I think they would rise to the challenge.

Now see, there comes an easy and obvious objection, and already you abandon Kevin Ryan's just-so story.

Which means that Kevin Ryan was unable to come up with a theory that survives even the most casual scrutiny.

 

[John85]

it wasnt an office fire. a 767 exploded.

“The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes” and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in a given location. (NIST, 2005; p. 179)

Content from External Source

 

[John85]

The impact of a 767 would be rather hard to protect against.

Theorizing is fine, but there really isn't any evidence of anything like that. Nor is there any need, as the impact and fire did the job.

The OP is predicated on the question of why the fires didn't ignite the thermite. The answer is that while some devices would likely have been destroyed or gone off, others would not. They could have been 1) not impacted, 2) fire protected, 3) coarser-grained at the level of the plane impacts (requiring higher ignition temperature).

Indeed, if some went off, the redundancy of the core and perimeter columns would have ensured that the building did not collapse prematurely.

 

[John85]

Now see, there comes an easy and obvious objection, and already you abandon Kevin Ryan's just-so story.

Which means that Kevin Ryan was unable to come up with a theory that survives even the most casual scrutiny.

Who cares about his idea? It is one of many possible answers to the question of why the thermite charges weren't ignited in the impact/fires.

 

[deirdre]

“The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes” and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in a given location. (NIST, 2005; p. 179)

Content from External Source

so? if a plane exploding cant activate the nano-paint, what can?

Who cares about his idea? It is one of many possible answers to the question of why the thermite charges weren't ignited in the impact/fires.

you do apparently.

They could have been 1) not impacted, 2) fire protected, 3) coarser-grained at the level of the plane impacts (requiring higher ignition temperature).

Indeed, if some went off, the redundancy of the core and perimeter columns would have ensured that the building did not collapse prematurely.

This isn't 'Creative Writing 101'. If you aren't going to provide evidence of your guessses, you might as well say 'they could have been magic devices'.

 

[John85]

Thermite (of any kind) is much too slow to bring down a building in a fashion that requires simultaneous severing of posts with timings on the order of 10s of milliseconds to stage a orderly floor-by-floor collapse as the WTC exhibited. You'd be lucky to get your timing within several seconds. You need true explosives and electronic timing for this.

Are you aware of this patent?

https://www.google.com/patents/US20060266204

When a [conventional] linear shaped charge is used for cutting steel on a steel bridge demolition project, a large degree of preparation work must be undertaken to ensure a successful cut or penetration. A “preconditioning” process involves removing overlapped plates and areas of reinforcement with a conventional cutting torch. This process is time consuming, expensive, and dangerous. Conversely, the sustained jet of a thermite charge offers improved performance over multi-plate materials with limited or substantially no preconditioning. The thermite charge's sustained jet also affords a greater assurance in cutting plates of varying thickness, layered plate configurations, and any supporting or reinforcing members that may exist in the middle or on the backside of a material. While the projected thermite charge particle stream is a slower reaction than that of an explosively driven jet, it is very fast from the perspective of the operator. The anticipated timing for material penetration is typically on the order of hundreds of milliseconds.

Content from External Source

 

[MikeC]

Then perhaps ......

as soon as you are arguing and using "perhaps" you are dealing with hypotheticals - if you don't have factual evidence to support your position then it is probably time to stop arguing as if you did.

 

[Oystein]

Who cares about his idea?

You did, when you introduced Kevin Ryan to the discussion by writing "An intriguing possibility is mentioned in The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites by Kevin Ryan."

Unless you were conscious of being insincere. In which case the entire debate is rather pointless and rather a waste of time.

It is one of many possible answers to the question of why the thermite charges weren't ignited in the impact/fires.

Well ok I have a few others:
* On each floor, there were seven elephants trained to blow vast amounts of finely dispersed water onto the thermite charges as the fuel explosions rushed through, in order to protect them from the immediate heat
* Nepalese Ninjas in super-thick asbestos suits were sent into the inferno and place the charges at each location as soon as the fire had moved on
* During the renovations of whatever, the HVAC system was modified to blow nitrogen at -150 °C through the hollow columns to cool them

Shall I go on? I find these ideas highly intriguing. And they have no evidence going for them, and they don't survive even casual scrutiny, but hey, intriguing they are?

I consider Kevin Ryan's suggestions on a level somewhere between the elephants and the cold nitrogen.

 

[Keith Beachy]

“The initial jet fuel fires themselves lasted at most a few minutes” and office material fires would burn out within about 20 minutes in a given location. (NIST, 2005; p. 179)

Content from External Source

Which ignited the biggest office fires in history. The office fires prior to collapse created more heat than 2,700 Tons of thermite would. The thermite fantasy ignores the office fire heat energy. Ironically, you point out that the jet fuel's heat energy, equal to the heat energy of 315 tons of thermite in each aircraft impact, can be ignored because the office fires are much more heat energy. The office fires lasted weeks after collapse.
It is sad 9/11 truth thermite theorists ignore the office fires, and ignore there is no evidence of thermite on any WTC steel.

The thermite charges you discuss would leave evidence of WTC; no evidence for thermite was found. No evidence.

 

[Admiral Biscuit]

You did, when you introduced Kevin Ryan to the discussion by writing "An intriguing possibility is mentioned in The Top Ten Connections Between NIST and Nano-Thermites by Kevin Ryan."

Unless you were conscious of being insincere. In which case the entire debate is rather pointless and rather a waste of time.


Well ok I have a few others:
* On each floor, there were seven elephants trained to blow vast amounts of finely dispersed water onto the thermite charges as the fuel explosions rushed through, in order to protect them from the immediate heat
* Nepalese Ninjas in super-thick asbestos suits were sent into the inferno and place the charges at each location as soon as the fire had moved on
* During the renovations of whatever, the HVAC system was modified to blow nitrogen at -150 °C through the hollow columns to cool them

Shall I go on? I find these ideas highly intriguing. And they have no evidence going for them, and they don't survive even casual scrutiny, but hey, intriguing they are?

I consider Kevin Ryan's suggestions on a level somewhere between the elephants and the cold nitrogen.

My money's on the ninjas.

 

[Fromage]

Are you aware of this patent?

https://www.google.com/patents/US20060266204

When a [conventional] linear shaped charge is used for cutting steel on a steel bridge demolition project, a large degree of preparation work must be undertaken to ensure a successful cut or penetration. A “preconditioning” process involves removing overlapped plates and areas of reinforcement with a conventional cutting torch. This process is time consuming, expensive, and dangerous. Conversely, the sustained jet of a thermite charge offers improved performance over multi-plate materials with limited or substantially no preconditioning. The thermite charge's sustained jet also affords a greater assurance in cutting plates of varying thickness, layered plate configurations, and any supporting or reinforcing members that may exist in the middle or on the backside of a material. While the projected thermite charge particle stream is a slower reaction than that of an explosively driven jet, it is very fast from the perspective of the operator. The anticipated timing for material penetration is typically on the order of hundreds of milliseconds.

Content from External Source

When they say "sustained jet", they mean "sustained jet" - as in thermite in a shaped backing. Thermite on a flat surface doesn't "jet". Think of a piece of angle iron, with the thermite spread on the inside of the angle, and the angle iron pressed and reshaped into a C. Or, thermite in a ceramic "trough" - that's shaped - "painting", "dipping" or "spraying" isn't shaped.

"100s of milliseconds" isn't fast enough for synchronized column cutting across 200' of building, especially when you're also trying to simulate a near free-fall collapses over successive floors. You need 10s of milliseconds or better from "ignition to cut". Not 100s from "ignition to begin to cut".

As I recall, that patent was for a shaped charge assembly that contained thermite instead of explosives. It has a certain attractiveness as a demolition device that doesn't "throw" debris long distances, make loud noises (breaking windows), and being especially insensitive to abusive handling. But it's fairly impractical in large scale multiple-charge situations _unless_ you don't care where the building falls - the uncertainty of "ignite to cut" times makes the collapse progression unpredictable.