About
What is chlorine trifluoride?
In short, hellfire.
ClF
3 is known to burn things that are otherwise inflammible, such as asbestos, sand, gravel, ashes, bricks, and glass. It burns independently of oxygen, meaning that most fire suppressants--such as fire extinguishers--won't work, and it reacts violently with water.
As it burns, it releases gaseous hydrochloric acid and hydrofluoric acid, the former of which is mostly harmful to inorganics and the latter of which difuses through the skin and selectively attacks bones and nerve endings. But don't worry, it'll burn out your nerves faster than they can transmit pain, so you'll never notice your flesh merrily burning away until someone points it out. Both gases are also, just for kicks, odorless and colorless. One chemist's recommendation to dealing with a spill is a good pair of running shoes.
Speaking of spills, there was once a spill of 900kg of the stuff that burned through 30cm of concrete and 90cm of gravel underneath said concrete. Notably, I can't find any records of other spills. I guess once was enough.
Chlorine trifluoride forms a white solid--not that you'll ever see it, its melting point is at -76.34 degrees Celsius--and a yellow-green liquid. After melting at 11.75 degrees C, it forms a mostly colorless gas that looks white if the air is particularly moist with a suffocatingly strong sweet smell.
Chlorine trifluoride was first manufactured a little before the start of World War II by Nazi Germany. They were experimenting in an attempt to find a good chemical to use as a combined flamethrower/poisonous gas. Codenamed "N-stoff," chlorine trifluoride was deemed too dangerous to use.
Let me repeat that:
the Nazis thought this chemical was
too dangerous to use in
battle. Let that sink in for a minute.
...Done? Okay.
Chlorine trifluoride does have some use today, if a bit far from the battlefield and its intended purpose. There's some research going into using it as rocket fuel, assuming we ever start sending rockets to space again, and it's used as a cleaning agent in the semiconductor industry.
But as for its more volatile cousin, dioxygen difluoride...
Signature
Yet to return, the shadowed one
Who quests for the Twilight Dragon.
Rumbles the Dark Hearth,
And Helba, Queen of the Dark,
Has finally raised her army.
Apeiron, King of Light, beckons.
At the base of the rainbow do they meet.
Against the abominable Wave,
Together they fight.
Alba's lake boils.
Light's great tree doth fall.
Power- now all to droplets turned
In the temple of Arche Koeln.
Returns to nothing,
This world of shadowless ones.
Never to return, the shadowed one,
Who quests for the Twilight Dragon.
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