Explosives nitropenta

The ethylene oxide had many uses for the Krauch-Schneider-Buetefisch Sparte. It was also the silent, colorless assistant of the Ter Meer Sparte. Ter Meer s pharmaceutical division could take the excess methanol, produced by Schneider for his anti-freezes and fuels, and turn it into shaving lotions and liniments. Methanol could be converted, in solid forms, to two deadly explosives — nitropenta and hexogen. And Ter Meer could make glycol (Prestone) react doubly with itself to produce diglycol, an intermediate in the manufacture of explosives. 

Among the important war chemicals, second only to nitrogen was the methanol which was already being wafted eastward in the imaginations of Krauch and Ambros and Ter Meer. The methanol went to Dynamit A.G. at Troisdorf and Kummer, where it was converted into the two deadliest and latest explosives — hexogen and nitropenta. 

B. Secondary explosive materials, large machine PETN (Nitropenta) 6 60... 

Certain explosives (TNT, Tetryl, etc.) can be compacted by compression in the absence of any additives sensitive explosives such as PETN (Nitropenta), RDX (Cyclonite), or HMX (Octogen) have to be phlegmatized by the incorporation of wax. The wax reduces the impact sensitivity and, at the same time, acts as a binder. 

Figure 2.21 Reduced chromatogram. Top separation of a mixture of explosives with peaks acetone, octogen, hexogen, tetryl, trinitrotoluene, and nitropenta. Bottom reduced chromatogram which shows only the signals of to, the critical peak pair of octogen and hexogen, and the last peak of nitropenta. Conditions column, 25cm X 4.6mm i.d. stationary phase, Grom-Sil 80 ODS-7 PH, 4 im mobile phase, 1 ml min gradient from 50-70% acetonitrile in water within 8 min UV detector 220 nm.

Figure 19.9 Analysis of explosives at a UV wavelength change of 2 nm. Conditions column, 25 cm x 4.0 mm i.d. stationary phase, LiChrospher 60 RP-Select B, 5gm mobile phase, Imimin water-acetonitrile (30 70). Peaks 1=octogen 2 = hexogen 3 tetryl 4 = trinitrotoluene 5 = nitropenta.

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