Explosive Properties of Melt Cast Erythritol Tetranitrate (ETN)

Abstract

Erythritol tetranitrate (ETN) is a low melting, solid, nitrate ester with significant explosive properties. The increased availability of its precursor (erythritol), which is now used as a sweetener, has attracted attention to the possible misuse of ETN as an improvised explosive. However, ETN also has some potential to be used as a component of military explosives or propellants. This article focuses on the properties of melt-cast ETN. The sensitivity of the compound towards impact and friction was tested. The explosive performance was evaluated, based on cylinder expansion tests and detonation velocity measurements. The impact energy and friction force required for 50% probability of initiation was 3.79 J and 47.7 N, respectively. A Gurney velocity value of G = 2771 m·s −1 and a detonation velocity of 8027 m·s −1 at a charge density of 1.700 g·cm −3, were found for the melt-cast material. The sensitivity characteristics of melt-cast ETN does not differ significantly from either literature values or the authors' data measured using the crystalline material. The explosive performance properties were found to be close to those of PETN.

Precursores De Explosivos Caseiros E a Legislação Brasileira De Controle De Produtos Químicos

“…O tetranitrato de eritritol (do inglês, erythritol tetranitrate -ETN), de fórmula química C 4 H 6 N 4 O 12 , é um éster de nitrato sintetizado na primeira metade do século XIX por John Stenhouse, tendo fórmula estrutural (Figura 3a) que se assemelha à de outros explosivos nitrados de cadeia alifática como a nitroglicerina (NG) (Figura 3b) e o tetranitrato de pentaeritritol (do inglês, pentaerythritol tetranitrate -PETN) (Figura 3c) (AGRAWAL e HODGSON, 2007;KÜNZEL, MATYÁŠ, et al, 2017;BEZEMER, MCLEN-NAN, et al, 2020a).…”

Properties of Erythritol Tetranitrate from Molecular Dynamics Simulation

“…Erythritol tetranitrate, ETN, C 4 H 6 N 4 O 12 , is a powerful and somewhat sensitive explosive that can be melt-casted. − It is related chemically to other nitrate ester-containing explosives such as pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) and nitroglycerin, as illustrated in Figure . It adopts a monoclinic unit cell in the space group P 2 1 / c with a density of 1.77 g cm –3 at room temperature .…”

Modifying explosive behavior with additives

“…However, the addition of RDX also dramatically increased the sensitivity of the formulation to shock, reducing the number of cards from 71 to 35 required to initiate in a large-scale gap test [4][5][6]. Addition of high-energy explosives to enhance the performance of inexpensive bulk charges is not unique to DNAN [7][8][9]. However, there is the issue that at levels above 5 %, these additives may sensitize the formulation [10].…”