Dry Synthesis of Alpha Aluminum Hydride

Alane, or AlH3, offers the potential for a significant increase in ISP in solid rocket motors, enabling extended range or speed to be achieved without incrased weight or missile redesign. Previous techniques to produce alane have not been scaleable to producion, and use large volumes of ether to purify the product. During Phase I, Powdermet demonstrated a direct synthesis technique to produce alane that eliminates the use of AlCl3, LiAlH4, and the resultant LiCl contamination, and that can potentially eliminate the use of ether entirely. The process is scalable, economic, and has the potential to produce high purity alane. This Phase II effort will further refine the alane manufacturing process, including developing techniques for controlling the phase and morphology of the resultant alane product. The Phase II's goal is process scale-up to 10Kg batch sizes of high purity, stable alpha-alane.