Prochemist specializes mainly in military black powder produced in accordance with MIL-P-223C, PN-C-86203, GOST 1028-79 standards and gunpowder for hunting and sports, as well as for industrial applications.

We have been specializing in the production of black powder continuously for over 330 years and we are one of the world’s leading producers, exporting it to many countries around the world e.g. USA, UK, Türkiye, Germany, Austria. For the production we use the highest quality components, tested in our modern laboratory. Our products are subject to strict quality control, thanks to which we pride ourselves on the best repeatability of parameters in the world.

We offer:

We can produce black powder on special order for a variety of the most demanding applications.

Production is covered by the quality system ISO 9001:2000.
Products have the CE safety certificate.

For orders or additional information, feel free to reach us at:

tel.: +48748163200 ext.2
e-mail: zlotystok@blackpowder.eu

The history of black powder *

Black powder is thought to have originated in China, where it was being used in fireworks and signals by the 10th century.

Between the 10th and 12th centuries, the Chinese developed the huo qiang (?fire lance?), a short-range proto-gun that channeled the explosive power of gunpowder through a cylinder?initially, a bamboo tube. Upon ignition, projectiles such as arrows or bits of metal would be forcefully ejected, along with an impressive gout of flame. By the late 13th century the Chinese were employing true guns, made of cast brass or iron. Guns began to appear in the West by 1304, when the Arabs produced a bamboo tube reinforced with iron that used a charge of black powder to shoot an arrow. Black powder was adopted for use in firearms in Europe from the 14th century but was not employed for peaceful purposes, such as mining and road building, until the late 17th century. It remained a useful explosive for breaking up coal and rock deposits until the early 20th century, when it was gradually replaced by dynamite for most mining purposes.

The preparation of black powder from solid ingredients requires uniform mixing and blending of the saltpetre, charcoal, and sulfur. The earliest manufacturing processes used hand methods; the ingredients were simply ground together into a powder using a mortar and pestle. Beginning in the 15th century, water-driven crushing devices of wood, called wooden stamps, came into use to grind the ingredients, and power-driven metallic crushing devices replaced the wooden stamp mills in the 19th century.

Because the burning of black powder is a surface phenomenon, a fine granulation burns faster than a coarse one.

A fast burning rate is effective ballistically but tends to create excessive pressures in the gun barrel. Thus, black powder in its powdered form burned too rapidly to be a safe propellant in firearms. To remedy this, Europeans in the 15th and 16th centuries began manufacturing powder in large grains of uniform size. The speed of burning could be varied by using a different size of granule. In the 19th century, as elongated projectiles replaced round balls and the rifling of gun tubes was adopted to rotate and stabilize the projectile, black powders were manufactured to burn even more slowly. In the 1850s Thomas J. Rodman of the U.S. Army developed black powder grains so shaped that they provided a progressively greater burning surface as the combustion progressed, with a resulting maximum energy release after the projectile had already begun to travel down the bore of the gun.

The first such explosive was black powder, which consists of a mixture of saltpetre (potassium nitrate), sulfur, and charcoal. When prepared in roughly the correct proportions (75 percent saltpetre, 15 percent charcoal, and 10 percent sulfur), it burns rapidly when ignited and produces approximately 40 percent gaseous and 60 percent solid products, the latter mostly appearing as whitish smoke. In a confined space such as the breech of a gun, the pent-up gas can be used for propelling a missile such as a bullet or artillery shell. Black powder is relatively insensitive to shock and friction and must be ignited by flame or heat.

* source – https://www.britannica.com/technology/gunpowder