Accidentally Making Terrorist Explosive

I ran into two interesting articles over on ChemistryWorld.com relating to two separate (separated by the Atlantic Ocean) student lab experiment that resulted university evacuations, the closure of chemistry labs, and an examination lab procedures. In both incidents, students inadvertently, produced an explosive beloved by terrorists due to its instability and explosive power. Let’s look at the most recent article first.

The first paragraph of that article describes the lab manufacture of a “small amount of a shock-sensitive explosive chemical”, that had been accidentally produced in a University of Delaware chemistry lab. I immediately flashed back to high-school chemistry where we convinced the Chem Professor (yes, I had a PhD Chemist as an instructor in high school, a story for another day) that we could use a jar of iodine crystals to show friends and family the wonders of chemistry; nitrogen tri-iodide, a well known ‘contact explosive’. Unfortunately for the administration of the Delaware lab, the students in this case were not making NI3 (a relatively low power explosive), they made triacetone triperoxide (TATP), a higher powered explosive that is almost as easy to detonate.

There were no details in the article on how this ‘accident’ occurred, but TATP is relatively easy to make, even though it is potentially dangerous, and extremely dangerous to purify. That was the reason for the evacuations and lab closures. To determine how this could ‘accidentally’ occur, we need to look at the earlier article, dating back to 2017.

While the details are only of interest to an organic chemist, the short description is that a chemical reaction was being undertaken, using acetone as a solvent. To reduce a byproduct of the primary reaction hydrogen peroxide was added to the vessel. Instead of calculating how much hydrogen peroxide was needed they used a large excess. The excess reacted with the acetone to form TATP. Again, the labs were evacuated, the area closed, and bomb disposal folks called in. Both incidents ended without explosion.

The big problem here is that TATP is a simple explosive to make and the base materials (acetone and hydrogen peroxide) are readily available at big box stores and beauty supply stores. It is so easy to make, it is being made by accident college labs.