Processing of Energetic Materials with Supercritical CO₂

Abstract

Because of their specific physical properties supercritical fluids show a specific solubility for various organic substances. Especially carbon dioxide with it’s moderate critical data (T_c = 31,3 °C and p_c = 7,28 MPa), noninflammability and chemical inertness was found to be an attractive alternative to hazardous organic solvents.

Main objective of this work was to study potential applications on supercritical CO₂ in the processing of energetic materials. Generally, the solubility or extractabillity of energetic materials like TNT, RDX, HMX, PETN and NTO strongly depends on pressure, temperature and specific modifying agents. Presented topics and potential applications of SC-CO₂ are:

• examination of phase-equilibria-data for different concentrations of TNT in liquid and SC-CO₂ under static conditions using a special designed sample cell:

• study of extraction efficiencies for TNT-contaminated soil samples as a function of the used extraction conditions and especially as a function of the soil matrices (SFE in analytical scale):

• screening of the extractabillity of different explosives in SC-CO₂ as a function of the used extraction parameters (pressure, temperature, time, usage of modifiers) using a dynamical SFE-apparatus in analytical scale;

• examination of usable processing conditions for the production of explosives like TNT and RDX with small particle sizes.