Warning: This experiment produces flames.
Fire safety protocols must be in place.
Greetings fellow nerds.
Another very simple video before we go back into some higher level stuff.
We're going to use potassium permanganate to make fire without matches.
Now first a word about potassium permanganate itself.
This is one of those weird reagents that's either very easy to find, or very hard to find depending on where you live.
Only recently did i find a domestic source, and it's the regenerant for greensand-based water filters.
I've included a link in the video description.
Now potassium permanganate is a very powerful and reactive oxidant.
It's so reactive that it can set fire to things even without matches or initial startup.
The most famous textbook reaction for this is potassium permanganate and glycerol.
Just mix them together and step back.
And there it goes.
I hear some campers like to use this method as a fun way to start a fire when matches and lighters are just too pedestrian.
Now another fuel that works well with potassium permanganate is brake fluid.
In particular, you need polyethylene glycol based brake fluid, also known as DOT 3 brake fluid.
It might take some time but eventually it'll work.
Now if you might recall in a previous video i reacted brake fluid and pool chlorine and was able to generate fire that way.
I also tried ethylene glycol or antifreeze and while it did react it did not catch fire.
But maybe it'll work this time.
So let's try potassium permanganate and antifreeze.
Looks like potassium permanganate succeeds where pool chlorine failed.
I'm actually quite surprised.
Now you might be asking does potassium permanganate ignite more common fuels like naptha, gasoline or diesel.
Here i am mixing potassium permanganate with gasoline.
And as you can see, not much happens.
This is because gasoline consists mostly of alkanes.
These don't have reactive functional groups that the potassium permanganate can attack.
Although my friends that tried this say their gasoline did react after a while
so i guess maybe it depends on the additives in the gasoline as well and might vary depending on region.
Anyway, we can still force the reaction forward by dripping in some concentrated sulfuric acid.
Sulfuric acid reacts with potassium permanganate to produce manganese heptoxide.
And there we go, the reaction is very quick.
Manganese heptoxide is an extremely powerful and reactive oxidizer, even more so than potassium permanganate.
So it can react with alkanes directly.
It'll also destroy human flesh quite easily so be extremely careful when doing this experiment.
Now it's so reactive that it'll even ignite mineral oil.
So here i am with a new mound of potassium permanganate and here i'm soaking it with mineral oil.
As you can see, nothing happens.
But when we add in sulfuric acid to make manganese heptoxideů oh there we go.
Now it's not burning that much because the temperature of the oil is below the flash point.
So we cannot sustain a flame.
But the manganese heptoxide is igniting small portions of it nonetheless.
If we wanted a sustained fire we'd need to heat this above the flash point.
Now moving on, i tried to react potassium permanganate with ethanol.
Interestingly enough, nothing happens.
The permanganate just seems to dissolve.
If it is reacting it's reacting very slowly.
I tried dripping sulfuric acid and a reaction does occur, but the ethanol seems to boil away before it has a chance to ignite.
The solution is simple enough, first we add sulfuric acid to potassium permanganate to produce concentrated manganese heptoxide.
Then we add the ethanol.
The extremely reactive manganese heptoxide heats up and ignites the ethanol before it has a chance to boil away.
Anyway, potassium permanganate has a huge number of uses not just for starting fires, but i'll explore those in separate videos.
Thanks for watching.
Special thank you to all of my supporters on patreon for making these science videos possible
with their donations and their direction.
If you are not currently a patron, but like to support the continued production of science videos like this one,
then check out my patreon page here or in the video description.
I really appreciate any and all support.