Production
Nitroglycerin is not a natural material so it must be manufactured. However, If something so explosive is so easy to set off then how can it be made safely? Even in present times there is still room for error resulting in large explosions. When Nitroglycerin was first produced it was an extremely long process because it called for manual stirring and constant watch. This would get so long that scientists would sit on one-legged chairs so if they fell asleep they would fall off. In the more modern age however not much was changed of the process. It was large machines mixing slowly all the compounds together with someone watching over it. It wasn't until the 1950's that things changed. The change was in reaction to the fact that it took so long to produce, they asked how can this be done quicker? Eventually the scientists decided that it would be quicker to have a flow of acid to add the Glyceryl to. In the reactor they created a flow of acid caused by a vacuum (empty space). The vacuum would pull in an amount of Glyceryl directly related to the amount of acid inside. If something went wrong the supervisor, behind a blast wall could pull a rope releasing a valve that destroyed the vacuum and therefore the mixing. This process was so much quicker that production time decreased from around two hours to two minutes.
Nitroglycerin is not a natural material so it must be manufactured. However, If something so explosive is so easy to set off then how can it be made safely? Even in present times there is still room for error resulting in large explosions. When Nitroglycerin was first produced it was an extremely long process because it called for manual stirring and constant watch. This would get so long that scientists would sit on one-legged chairs so if they fell asleep they would fall off. In the more modern age however not much was changed of the process. It was large machines mixing slowly all the compounds together with someone watching over it. It wasn't until the 1950's that things changed. The change was in reaction to the fact that it took so long to produce, they asked how can this be done quicker? Eventually the scientists decided that it would be quicker to have a flow of acid to add the Glyceryl to. In the reactor they created a flow of acid caused by a vacuum (empty space). The vacuum would pull in an amount of Glyceryl directly related to the amount of acid inside. If something went wrong the supervisor, behind a blast wall could pull a rope releasing a valve that destroyed the vacuum and therefore the mixing. This process was so much quicker that production time decreased from around two hours to two minutes.