EMISSION AND ABSORPTION MEASUREMENTS OF ENERGETIC MATERIAL COMBUSTION IN MOLTEN SALT

摘要

The potential to use molten salts as high-temperature reaction media has been recognized for many years. In particular, the molten salt destruction (MSD) process has been developed as an attractive means of destroying waste energetic materials (Upadhye et al, 1994). This process involves injecting a slurry composed of air, water, and waste energetic materials into a molten salt bath, where the energetic materials react to produce mostly CO_2, N_2, and H_2O (Watkins et al, 1994). While MSD has been demonstrated to be a cost-effective and environmentally-benign technique for destroying energetic materials, there are fundamental questions that need to be addressed. For example, data are lacking on the extent to which molten salts are chemically altered by the injection of energetic materials, and a better understanding of the intermediate chemical species present during energetic waste decomposition is needed. In addition, little is known about general combustion behaviors such as bubble formation characteristics, gas evolution, and overall lifetimes of energetic samples immersed in molten salts. This study examines the characteristics of energetic materials injected into molten salt baths. Behaviors of the high explosives LX-17 (92.5 wt% l,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (TATB), 7.5 wt% Kel-F 800 plastic binder), LX-04 (85 wt% octahydro-l,3,5,7-tetranitro-1,3,5,7-tetrazocine (HMX), 15 wt% Viton A plastic binder), and 2,6-dinitrotoluene (DNT) were studied when these materials were immersed into LiCl-KCl-NaCl eutectic at 700 ℃. This temperature is representative of conditions encountered in MSD reactors (Upadhye et al, 1994 and Watkins et al, 1994). The LX-17, LX-04 and DNT samples were initially 0.33 g. In addition to measuring absorption and emission spectra, high-speed photographs were taken during sample decomposition.