My point here is of course, go check yours for expiry date or look at the gauge.

We had a dry powder one in our kitchen. It was years out of date but it had a gauge on it that was in the green.

Our house was badly damaged by fire last year. The extinguisher wasn't used, but afterwards I decided it was best dispensed with on age grounds.

I pulled the pin out and squeezed the trigger. Nothing!

I have a couple of old dead ones that I was thinking of trying to use for tyre inflation IF I ever get around to cobbling together appropriate plumbing.

One of them I emptied, putting the oddly "runny" yellow powder in old plastic bottles.I understand this stuff is a mix of siliconized monoammonium phosphate powder and ammonium sulfate,

Uses I can think of for that include

(a) Fertilizer. Main ingredients should be pretty good, but might there be toxic minor components? Anyway I have no garden, so academic for me.

(b) Rust Treatment? Not sure about the ammonium sulfate but I think monoammonium phosphate should have anti-rust activity either as a soak or as an electolyte in electrolysis. I've never de-rusted the cars tool kit (spare wheel well was flooded when I bought the car) which might be a suitable target

https://patents.google.com/patent/US2832706A/en

(c) Anti-fire bombs: With an appropriate fire cracker (fuze exposed) and powder inside,a plastic bottle could be an automated fire suppressant system that could be left in the engine compartment, above the cooker, etc. Farmers are using time delay fire crackers in the surrounding rice fields as bird scarers at the moment.

There does, however, seem to be a slight risk that the ammonium sulfate could itself be explosively set off by the dispersal charge, though it does seem a bit unlikely that they would make IED fire extinguishers

Any other ideas?

Edited by edlithgow on 11/05/2020 at 08:07

I didn't think amm.sulphate was an explosive, but amm.nitrate certainly is, as all good terrorists know. That's because it can be turned instantly into water and nitrogen when properly initiated.

I'd think even bad terrorists wouldn't use it on its own, unless in a hurry.

When I was in the TA RE ammonium nitrate was mixed with diesel in a cement mixer to give an explosive known as ANFO (Ammonium Nitrate Fuel Oil). The nitrate provides an oxidant for the diesel.

I'd GUESS the sulfate might do the same so maybe it'd be ok on its own.. Both apparently banned on the NW Frontier and in Afghanistan, probably not just because they are good for the poppy crop.