Processing of Energetic Materials with Supercritical Fluids

1The various departments of defense possess explosives and propellants produced since 1948. The stability of these old explosives and propellants are in question and the Army is required to dispose these explosives. The total amount of obsolete explosives is around 300 million tons and increasing every year. These can be disposed of by burning using the Open Pad Burning Method which is virtually been abolished by the EPA and alternate mehtods such as the incinerator have been proposed. Current incinerator systems can handle only 0.5 lbs/hr of explosives because they contain to much. Currently extraction mehtodology for demilitarization of propellants and explosives use carcinogenic hydrocarbon solvents, are time consuming, insufficiently sensitive, labor intensive and costly. Besides, bydrocarbon solvents are expensive, require vacuum distillation to remove the solvent from the extracted compounds, and the plant has to explosion proof. A new process, safe to personnel, meeting both OSHA and EPA requirements, using inexpensive solvent, not requiring explosion proof plant would be very useful in the demilitarization of the explosives and save the government considerable amount of money. The proposed research seeks to apply supercritical fluid technology to extract and separate energetic materials, stabilizers and non-polymerics from propellants and explosives.