Erythritol tetranitrate

Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN) is a secondary explosive derived from erythritol. Although a secondary, it is slightly sensitive to shock, and with a detonation velocity of 8000 m/s it's quite a dangerous chemical. Unlike its cousin pentaerythritol tetranitrate, ETN possesses a perfect oxygen balance.
ETN has almost no uses, except as an explosive.

I synthesized a small amount a while ago.

First I chilled a beaker containing 9ml of 98% sulphuric acid down to -1 C using an icebath. To the sulphuric acid, I added 5g of potassium nitrate slowly in portions. The nitrate addition is exothermic and if the temperature gets too high, it could cause a runaway reaction. Once the temperature had gone back down to -1 C, I added 3g of erythritol. I then let the mixture stand for 30 minutes with occasional stirring. After this, the mixture had turned quite thick. 50ml of water was added slowly, and at once the ETN precipitated.

I filtered out the ETN and dried it. This was my product:

HNO3 + 2 H2SO4 <==> H3O+ + 2 HSO4- + NO2+

Unfortunately I failed to detonate it. My silver fulminate primer didn't seem to be powerful enough. I'll try again sometime and may upload a picture of the explosion.