A Study of Thermal Decomposition and Kinetic Evaluation of Boron Blended Flash Powder Composition

Abstract

Herein, the thermal characteristics of flash powders of different combinations of Potassium Nitrate, Sulphur, Aluminium and Boron are reported. From the literature, it is identified that Boron implements lack of sensitiveness to flash powder mixture, which promotes the safety during the manufacturing process. But the thermal behaviour of the Boron blended compositions remain a mystery. Hence, various combinations of flash powder compositions are prepared by keeping the % of KNO3 and % of S as constant, and gradually 23% of Aluminium is reduced (23% to 0) by increasing the quantity of Boron (0 to 23%) in 19 trials, and are subjected to TGA/DSC analysis individually. The TGA and the DSC analysis reveals that the 65.65% replacement of Aluminium with Boron mixture shows predominant characteristics which is suitable for fireworks. Also, the reaction kinetics and the critical ignition temperature are calculated for the optimum composition. The performance of the fireworks product is checked with varying quantity to meet out the optimum quality.