Sublimation Properties of Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate Single Crystals Doped with Its Homologs

Abstract

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) is a secondary explosive used extensively in military and commercial applications. Coarsening of PETN during long‐term storage changes the physical properties such as surface area and particle morphology which are important factors in initiation and performance. Doping of impurities was proposed to slow the coarsening process since impurities were shown to modify both the kinetic and thermodynamic properties. In this paper, we discuss how doping of PETN with its homologs of dipentaerythritol hexanitrate (diPEHN) and tripentaerytritol octanitrate (triPEON) affect kinetic and thermodynamic parameters. Pure and homolog doped PETN single crystals were prepared by solvent evaporation in acetone at room temperature. Doping concentrations for this study were 1000 ppm, 5000 ppm, and 10000 ppm. Activation energy and vapor pressure of pure and doped PETN single crystals were obtained from thermogravimetric analysis data.

The Role of Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) Aging in Determining Detonator Firing Characteristics

“…PETN is a stable, powerful explosive with high brisance that is used throughout the U.S. military stockpile [1], commonly in devices such as EBW (exploding bridge wire) and EFI (exploding foil initiator) detonators. Because of this wide spread-usage, the stability properties and initiation behavior of PETN have been investigated over the past several decades [2,3,4,5,6,7]. However, there still exist important gaps in predicting its behavior in standard commercial detonators over long periods of time.…”

Melting Behavior and Heat of Fusion of Compounds that Undergo Simultaneous Melting and Decomposition: An investigation with HMX

“…HMX, RDX, and PETN powder were obtained from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Single crystals of pure HMX, RDX, and PETN are grown by a solvent evaporation method . Acetone (purity 99.6%, supplied by Fisher Scientific) is used as the solvent for growing crystals, and detailed information on the materials and chemicals used in this investigation is summarized in Table .…”

The crystal structure of dipentaerthritol hexanitrate, C10H16N6O19

“…Dipentaerythritol hexanitrate is one of the primary byproducts at the production progress of pentaerythritol tetranitrate [5,6]. The performance of dipentaerythritol hexanitrate, such as thermal stability and detonation property, is worse than that of pentaerythritol tetranitrate [7,8].…”

“…The performance of dipentaerythritol hexanitrate, such as thermal stability and detonation property, is worse than that of pentaerythritol tetranitrate [7,8]. The mechanical sensitivity is higher than pentaerythritol tetranitrate [5]. The dipentaerythritol hexanitrate is not commercially available because of its properties [9].…”