What's the difference between black powder and smokeless powder?

the answer is long and technical so I will give you some links you can read


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokeless_p鈥?/a>


hate giving you links instead of answering your question


as said before the answer is long and I don't want to mislead youWhat's the difference between black powder and smokeless powder?
Black powder is the old charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter mix that the Chinese invented a thousand years ago. It's common ';gunpowder';. It burns badly and creates huge amounts of smoke.





Smokeless powder is based on the explosive capabilities of certain organic compounds called ';nitrocellulose';. In its easiest form, it's cotton (cellulose) that's been treated with nitric and sulfuric acids to create what's known as ';guncotton';. It's an explosive by itself....but add a tiny bit of nitroglycerine to that and you get a mean propellant that's easily formed into grains and safe to handle. Very little smoke.





Response to the unnamed fellow below:





Black powder, when burned, only produces propellant gases with approx 35% of it's mass. 65% of the mass of black powder, when burned, becomes useless solid byproducts in the gun barrel and in the air. If that's not ';burns badly'; in your opinion, perhaps you need to go back to the third grade again, bud? Your comprehensive skills are obviously lacking.What's the difference between black powder and smokeless powder?
Black powder is composed of charcoal, sulfur and potassium nitrate. It burns rapidly at a linear rate regardless of the pressure but produces less maximum pressure than does modern smokless powder. and, yes, it does produce clouds of smoke when it is used as a gun powder.





Smokeless powder is composed of two basic materials. One is nitrocellulose and the other is nitroglycerine. Some smokeless powders are made of only one of these materials and is called a single base powder. Others are composed of a mixture of both components and are called double based powders. The reasosn for using mixtures of the two components is to control their burning rates. Faster burning powders are used for shotguns and handguns. The slower burning powders are used for rifle powders.





Smokeless powders are all progressive burning powders. That means that as the pressure within the cartridge increases, so does the burning rate. It produces a more gentle acceleration than does black powder and achieved much greater final pressures and higher total velocities than will blackpowder. Blackpowder burns at the same rate regardless of the increasing pressure. The maximum pressure is reached more quickly but is significalntly less than smokeless powder. These lower total pressures of black powder are the reason that you cannot use smokeless powder in a gun designed for black powder. You will blow it up and yourself along with it.





As for the comparative cleanleness of the two types of powder, black powder leaves MUCH more residue than does smokeless powder. In addition, when the sulfur and potassium nitrate burn they form sulfuric acid and nitric acid which are very corrosive to metal. Black powder residue must be completely removed from your gun as soon as you are through shooting for the day to keep the gun from rusting away. Smokeless powdeer does not have this problem and immediate cleaning is not an issue as long as you don't have any old or foreign cartridges with smokeless powder but a corrosive primer. If you have a cartridge with a corrosive primer, you have to clean immediately.
quote:





Black powder is the old charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter mix that the Chinese invented a thousand years ago. It's common ';gunpowder';. It burns badly and creates huge amounts of smoke.





My father once told me that if you don't know what your talking about......DON'T.





There is NO ';smokeless'; powder on the market today that burns as uniformly as black powder. However it was developed by the Chinese and it does create large amounts of smoke.





The main difference between black powder and modern is guns you have to clean every time you shoot them, and those you don't. There are a myriad of other dynamics that factor into which discipline you might want to get into, but do not think for an instant that black powder is inferior simply because of its origin.
Smoke
short answer. black powder is a mechanical mixture of ingredients and is classified as an explosive. ';smokeless'; powder is a chemical combination and it considered a flamable solid
You are asking a question that has a long, complicated answer. So I will give you the best short answer. Black powder (the ';original propellant';) is very pressure sensitive, produces a lot of smoke when ignited, and is not very efficient (meaning it takes a lot more to produce the gas to propel a slug). Smokeless powder burns cleaner (produces more gas to drive a bullet than just smoke), is pressure sensitive, and very efficient (meaning it takes a lot less grains to do the job). Smokeless is much safer to use than black powder and produces better results. But it is also more complex chemically. Because of this guns using smokeless propellant must have petroleum based products utilized for proper cleaning. Soap and water will not remove the chemical compounds (with the exception of corrosive salts made by old primers used during the first half of the 20th century-but that is a special case). Black powder is more organic and soap and water (with a followup of animal/vegetable lard) will do the trick. Water, soap, and lard were very commonly used back in the 19th century for gun care before smokeless came around. I do not have the time to construct a better answer I have a link to a more sophisticated answer. You will notice that I did not ';copy'; my answer from this link but want you to read it for chemical composition info.
the black powder burns differently than the smokeless the smokeless burns hotter
Lots of things, the two are hardly comparable other than that they both can be used to propel projectiles; the basic differences are:





Chemcial composition


Burn Rate


Byproducts of combustion (smoke and debris)


Pressure curve


Size and density of pieces of powder


Intended Purpose





Keep in mind that smokeless powder should never be used in any black powder gun. Black powder may be used in guns developed for smokeless powder, but you must clean the gun after every use and do not use petroleum based solvents - they form a tar when they combine with residue from burnt black powder.