Ammonium Permanganate Synthesis
Ammonium permanganate is a Class 4 oxidizer as listed by the NFPA along with some other heavy hitters such as ammonium perchlorate, guanidine nitrate and potassium superoxide. Specs (given by Axt) are 15-20cm (ETN=30-35 PETN=40-45) on the drop test and a VoD of only 1700m/s. It's not particularly useful as it is fairly sensitive and low powered, but it's always interesting to make something. The upside is that it is quite easy to make and does not require any exotic chemicals. You just need some potassium permanganate and ammonium nitrate. So now for the actual procedure.
Six grams of potassium permanganate is dissolved in 60 ml of boiling water. To that, 75 grams of ammonium nitrate (an excess to drive the reaction) is added and dissolved.
At this point you can pour off the solution to get rid of any undissolved or decomposed products, but I don't do this. The solution is then chilled to about 10°C to precipitate the product - apparently cooling further will cause the precipitate to take on the form of needles instead of the desired granular form. All that's left to do is filter and dry and it's ready for use. One thing to note, the filter paper starts to crumble and disintegrate after some time of the product drying on it.
Here is a video of ignition of the ammonium permanganate. You can see the dark MnO2 being produced, and some unburned product gets spread around. One thing to note - in this video it burns up a bit slowly. Other times I've had it go up in a quick little puff. From what it looks like to me though, the main pile here burned up quickly and the tissue underneath as well as the little bits of product that were surrounding the pile burned for the rest of the time. Either way, here it is.
