Manufacturing Technology Development for Production of Nitrate Salts

The DoD has identified a deficiency in the Industrial Base for the supply of various nitrate salts, specifically potassium, barium, strontium and lead nitrate. There appears to be insufficient domestic manufacturing capacity to meet the DoD’s needs for these salts.  Without a trusted and reliable domestic industrial base supplier of these materials, there is a serious threat to warfighter preparedness and national security. Potassium nitrate exhibits the highest criticality of the aforementioned nitrate salts and potentially the highest usage in the DoD, thus will be the sole focus of this Phase I effort. Not only will the Phase I focus on the synthesis of potassium nitrate, but also on the application of modern analytical processes in an effort to help the DoD update the military specification and avoid time-consuming and outdated analytical methods, some of which use radioactive or toxic materials. The final objective of this Phase I will be a conceptual design for a system to manufacture potassium nitrate. As part of this effort, Nalas will evaluate the potential for all salt processes to share a common manufacturing platform due to the small volumes of nitrate salts required by the US government.