Detection and Characterization of Smokeless Powders with Ion Mobility Spectrometry

摘要

Smokeless Powders are a class of propellants that were developed in the late 19th century to replace black powder; it has been used as an explosive in shotguns, rifles, firearms and many other larger caliber weapons. These propellants can be placed into one of three different classes according to the chemical composition of their primary energetic ingredients. Advance equipment have been designed and used for the detection of explosives devices and compounds potentially energetic. In this research we are developing an analytical methodology to detect different formulation of smokeless powders: Alliant-American Select, Alliant-Bullseye, and Alliant-Red Dot using the ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) technique. We used different surfaces like computer diskettes, CD's, book covers and plastics to study their adsorption/desorption process. Using micropipettes, we delivered solutions with different amounts of Smokeless Powders from a 1000 ppm solution and deposit it on various types of filters to make a calibration curve. Several amounts of Smokeless Powder were deposited to the different surfaces and collected with filter paper. The samples were desorbed directly from the filter to the instrument inlet port. Subsequently, the percentage of explosive recovered was calculated.