Water expls

Ferrostlicons are compds prepd by fusing iron and silica in an electric furnace at high temps. Some of the high silicon varieties, particularly 50/50 compd, are expl and are dangerous to transport and to handle. FeSi is of unknown toxicity. Moisture, steam, or water decompose it and impurities liberate phosphine and arsine with water. Expl and fire hazards are considered moderate and arise from the reaction with water. For shipping purposes FeSi with Sx 30—70% is considered a flammable solid and must carry yellow labels. If the Si is less than 30 or more than 70%, the material is not considered hazardous... 

CA 72, 14388f(1970) [Blasting with thickened, slurried inorganic oxidizer salt-alcohol-water expl mixts. Division of USP 3395056 (CA 69, 68071). The disclosure is similar, but the claims are different]... 

P Ger 212 (Under water expls) 5)Anon, Ammunition Ashore. Production and Renovation ,... 

N 16.47%, OB to C02 —103.4%, triclinic needles (from ale). prisms (from acet), mp 238.2°, bp expl at 415°, d 1.48g/cc. Insol in w, si sol in hot ale eth, misc in hot acet benz. Can be prepd by treating mesitylene with a mixt of. nitric sulfuric acids in the cold (Refs 2 3). Blanksma (Ref 4) prepd it by dissolving mesitylene in sulfuric acid, partial sulfonation taking place, and then adding the soln to nitric acid, with the pptn of trinitio-mesitylene. Kholevo (Ref 6) nitrated mesitylene with nitric acid 27, sulfuric acid 69, water 4% to yield white crysts. The expl power of trinitro-mesitylene is less than PA (Ref 9), and it develops a bomb press 84% that of TNT (Ref 8), Its impact sensitivity is 52% that of TNT (Ref 7), and it expls at 415° (Ref 5)... 

An important class of expl materials contains metallic fuels and inorganic oxidants. Examples are Tritonal (TNT/A1, 80/20), Amatols (TNT/AN, 28/80 80/20), and Minol-2 (TNT/AN/A1, 40/40/20). Oxidants other than nitrates, such as chlorates and perchlorates, may be employed. Water solns containing these cations are highly corrosive to metals. Alkaline metal salts, for example, in the presence of moisture, will pit A1 quickly (Ref 6)... 

Recent studies (Ref 46a) indicated that water did indeed enhance the gassing of Minol at temps above 75°, but that this gassing represented less than 0.1% of decompn in the mixt, and would be a small volume of gas relative to the mass of expl in a munition. At the present time, therefore, the cause(s) of spewing or oozing are still not known... 

The work of Avrami et al on the impact sensy of Lead Azide-water (LA-w) mixts contg various expls and drying agents, conducted with the standard PicArsn impact test app, is of interest. 

The appropriate mixed acid compns for the nitration processes that produce militarily and industrially important expls will be described in Sections V VI. Typical MA compns for aromatic nitrations contain 110 to 200% nitric acid over the stoichiometric requirement. For the nitration of toluene to MNT DNT, a typical MA compn in round figures is 30% HN03,60% H2S04, 10% H20. For the nitration of DNT to TNT the MA contains no water and is approx 20% HN03, 80% H2S04... 

Such slurries are especially useful for transporting expl sensitizers used in aq slurry blasting agents. Thus, a mixt was prepd by stirring together 66% dry Nitrostarch, 39.8% water, and 0.2% Polyhall 295 (a commercial partiaily hydrolyzed polyacrylamide of mw... 

Basic Explosives Manufacture. The major quantities and the toughest problems are here. They include a) acid waters, treated with lime or soda ash, chemical washes, spills, washdowns b) Red Water from TNT purification. A complex, brick-red soln of Na nitrate, Na sulfate, Na sulfite, Na nitrite, and about 17% organics which include sulfonated nitrotoluene isomers and complex, unidentified dye-bodies c) dissolved expls, eg, Pink Water which is approx lOOppm TNT in w d) suspended expl particles — dust and chips and e) sometimes solvents such as acet, benz, and dimethyl aniline... 

Load/Assemble /Pack Operations (LAP). Small. Mostly floor washdowns and generally similar to Pink Water. They include a) dissolved expls b) dust and chips and c) heavy metals from paints and corrosion and metal cleaning. The washout of reject munitions at some LAP plants can contribute substantial additional effluents when washout operations are running... 

Measurements of the transit times of weak shock waves ( 10Q bar) were used to obtain sound wave velocities in larger specimens than listed in Table II. In the arrangement of Fig 3 a cylinder (or slab) of the expl was immersed in a Plexiglas container filled with water. Initiation of the detonator produced a shock wave which arrived nearly plane thru the water at the surface of the expl specimen. The motion of wave was recorded by a smear camera using a shadowgraph technique. Plots of Us up relationships showed that the resulting curves were nearly straight lines and that for particle velocities, up, from 0.3 to 1.2 mm/ftsec, shock wave velocities are ... 

N.M. Junk in 4thONRSympDeton (1965), pp 92-101. Observations made in a water medium show that for several expls at various diams, the lateral pressure is 38 to 73% of the shock pressure generated at the terminal end of the explosive column... 

Detonation in Slurry Explosives. Cook, in his book, pp 316-21, described under the heading "Water-Compatible Explosives properties of slurry explosives developed by M.A. Cook.St H.E. Farnam. These expls were intended for use in large diameter underwater blasting at Iron Ore Company of Canada s Knob Lake operation. The success of these expls brought out the importance of pressure and density on the products of detonation. Table 12.21 of Cook s book gave computed properties of three dry versus water soaked slurry mixtures at AN/TNT ratios of zero, 1.0 8c 3.25. It was of interest to note that the computed (dry basis) available energy A of the TNT in slurry with 27% water was 17% greater... 

Equation (6) is used to calibrate the apparatus and determine the detonation temperature Baum et al (Ref 44, p 97) described the spectroscope method developed in Russia in 1945 by Alentsev, Belyaev, Sobolev Stepanov, which was applicable only to transparent liquid expls, such as NG, NGc, etc. In order to elimi-. nate luminosity caused by shock wave in the atmosphere, the authors immersed the test tube with. sample in water. For a more detailed description of the method, see Ref 16 and pp 98-100 of Ref 44. The values obtd by this method are considerably lower than the calcd values. For example, for NG the exptl value was only 3150CK vs 4520°K obtd by calcn and for NGc. 3160 vs 4700... 

About 1943, a simplified method for ealen of deton velocities of solid organic expls was developed at the Explosives Research.Laboratory (ERL), Bruceton, Pennsylvania. As there was no report issued at that time but just an unpublished letter of E.M. Boggs F.J. Martin addressed to Brinkley, a brief description of the method was given by him in Ref 39, p 87 In the ERL method, the general equation of state (See our eq 23), with a single covolume constant per unit mass of gaseous expln product, was used and the decompn scheme which leads to quantitative formation of water,... 

Table 1 gives critical diamaters of various AN/TNT expl mixts for unconfined and confined chges in water... 

Cook (Ref 3) discusses the effect of water on an AN/Al mixt contg ca 12% water which results in a mixt capable of large-diam blasting strength (underwater) of unprecedented magr nitude. The high expl potential of such a mixt is illustrated by heat of expln of 50/30 flQ AN/Al/ Water which gives a value of 1600 cal/g vs that of 40/40/20 AN/Al Water which. is 2100 cal/g, the probable practical limit of such mixts... 

Detonation, Water Plexiglos Induced Shock Wove Velocity in. Cook et al (Ref 2) applied the "aquarium technique in the exptl detn of the equation of state for water Lucire. The results for water are compared with similar results by other methods. Measurements of the peak pressures in the deton wave are presented for RDX, RDX/salt, TNT HBX-1. Peak pressures were found to be the CJ or deton pressures of the thermohydro-dynamic theory. There was no evidence whatever for the "spike of the Zel dovich-von Neumann model even though conditions were such that this spike would have been detected by the method employed if it were present, at lease in the large diam, nonideal expls of max reaction zone length Refs.T) C. Fauquignon, CR 251, 38 (I960) 2) M, A. Cook et al, JAppl... 

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