(no subject)

[webofevil]

Chemists! A question. Here Lord Brabazon is describing a thing:

There was in those days a strange form of tinned food which you cannot get now. In a balloon you naturally cannot use a flame and consequently you could have nothing hot, for it was before the day of the thermos flask. But there was some tinned stuff called "Calorit" which consisted of any food such as stew or soup or anything you liked hot, the tin being inside another cylinder. When you wanted to eat you made a hole from the outside to the inside cylinder, and I suppose water came in contact with some chemical, for if you left it for about a quarter of an hour it became so hot you could hardly eat it. It was the most remarkable of tinned foods and I could never understand why it disappeared, for it would be of inestimable value nowadays for people in motor-cars.

I can find only one other reference to Calorit, in an 1905 article on feeding soldiers. What in all likelihood was the magic ingredient that superheated? And is the reason for its disappearance, as I strongly suspect, that it was actually massively carcinogenic?

EDIT: Thank you all. I feel mildly enlightened. Glad to have been wrong about the carcinogenic thing, too.

Comments

[nmg.livejournal.com]

As I understand it, the MRE flameless heaters contain magnesium powder, salt and iron oxide powder; greater energy density than in lime slaking.

[gummitch.livejournal.com]

Goodness, that's Thermite!

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Argh. Sorry, braino - should have typed "iron powder", not "iron oxide powder". The energy comes from the rapid oxidation of Mg by water, giving magnesium hydroxide and hydrogen as products (the iron and salt are there to increase the rate of the reaction).

Given that the heaters give off hydrogen gas, it should come as no surprise that, if you type "mre heater" into Google, one of the suggestions you're given is "mre heater bomb".