Carbonite was one of the earliest and most successful coal-mining

explosives An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An expl ...

. It is made from such

ingredient An ingredient is a substance that forms part of a mixture (in a general sense). For example, in cooking, recipes specify which ingredients are used to prepare a specific dish. Many commercial product (business), products contain secret ingredie ...

s as

nitroglycerin Nitroglycerin (NG), (alternative spelling of nitroglycerine) also known as trinitroglycerin (TNG), nitro, glyceryl trinitrate (GTN), or 1,2,3-trinitroxypropane, is a dense, colorless, oily, explosive liquid most commonly produced by nitrating g ...

wood meal Sawdust (or wood dust) is a by-product or waste product of woodworking operations such as sawing, sanding, milling, planing, and routing. It is composed of small chippings of wood. These operations can be performed by woodworking machinery ...

, and some

nitrate Nitrate is a polyatomic ion A polyatomic ion, also known as a molecular ion, is a covalent bonded set of two or more atoms, or of a metal complex, that can be considered to behave as a single unit and that has a net charge that is not zer ...

as that of sodium; also

nitrobenzene Nitrobenzene is an organic compound with the chemical formula C6H5 NO2. It is a water-insoluble pale yellow oil with an almond-like odor. It freezes to give greenish-yellow crystals. It is produced on a large scale from benzene as a precursor t ...

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

, and

diatomaceous earth Diatomaceous earth (), diatomite (), or kieselgur/kieselguhr is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that can be crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder. It has a particle size ranging from more than 3 μm to le ...

. Carbonite was invented by Bichel of Schmidt and Bichel. The term Carbonite can refer to these things: * least commonly, an early explosive from Schmidt and Bichel made of sulphuretted tar oil, nitrocumene, and sodium nitrate,The Manufacture of Explosives, Oscar Guttman, p. 231 *

dynamite Dynamite is an explosive made of nitroglycerin, sorbents (such as powdered shells or clay), and Stabilizer (chemistry), stabilizers. It was invented by the Swedish people, Swedish chemist and engineer Alfred Nobel in Geesthacht, Northern Germa ...

made to the specific Carbonite recipe and sold by Schmidt and Bichel under that name, or * an entire class of spin-offs of the original recipe (Arctic Carbonite, Ammonkarbonit, etc.); their common feature is that the percentage of combustible materials (

or flour starch) is so high that most of the carbon in the reaction is bound into carbon monoxide and the temperature of combustion is relatively low. Some safety dynamites are carbonites.

References

Explosives {{explosive-stub