Prepare a solution of 5.4 g of ethylene glycol and 27.3 g of difluoronitroacetic acid in a 150-mL beaker.  Place the beaker in a salt-ice bath and cool it to at lest 0 C.  Slowly add 50 g of concentrated sulfuric (> 95%) dropwise to the solution while stirring.  Try to maintain a temperature under 0 C during the addition.  After all of the acid has been added allow the beaker to stand at room temperature for 36 hours to complete the reaction.

Place the contents of the beaker into a separatory funnel and allow the layers to separate.  The lower layer consists of spent acid and can be discarded.  The remaining upper layer should be shaken with a few small portions of water and then added to a small Erlenmeyer flask along with anhydrous calcium chloride to dry it.  The dried mixture is then distilled under vacuum to yield BEAF, which boils at 73-75 C at 0.5 mm Hg.  Yield is about 30%.

An example of an explosive formulation containing BEAF is as follows:  With rapid stirring by an overhead mixer combine 67.67% finely ground HMX with 30.92% BEAF and 1.41% of colloidal silica.  For a plastic material add a very small amount of a cross linking agent such as di- or tri- acrylates, and a curing catalyst such as benzoyl peroxide, or methyl ethyl ketone peroxide.  The explosive can be pressure injected into a mold and cured by heating at 40-60 C for 40 minutes.

While a good faith effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of all scientific information presented on this page, the possibility exists that some errors have invaded the machine. Furthermore, there may be certain omissions of physical properties, reaction conditions, necessary equipment, storage and handling requirements, and critical safety data. As with any scientific endeavor, especially chemistry, the necessary safety precautions should be observed at all times.

I do not allow errors to persist on my website once they have been discovered, but I need your help to find them. If you observe an error in any procedure, or a critical omission of essential safety precautions, and you have a valid reference that I can independently verify to back up your claim, please contact me via the error reporting form. If there are omissions in this procedure, such as a missing boiling point, density, etc., please contact me if you can fill in the blanks. I am also interested in receiving any alternate methods, or improvements in the procedure to synthesize this compound. If you are interested in submitting your own information please use the user submission area.

If you have comments, additions, clarifications, or observations that you wish to add about this compound and its method of synthesis, post them on The Forum using the thread below . You must be a registered member of The Forum to make posts, which is free and easy to do. The rules of this commenting thread are different from the regular rules of The Forum. This thread is for additions to this page only, no questions or remarks are allowed that do not contribute to the scientific information of this compound are allowed. To that end all posts to this thread will be moderated.