(490a) Scale-up Methodologies When Handling Extremely Dangerous Intermediates and Products

The Department of Defense is currently investigating 'green' primary explosives. As a result, dozens of novel primary explosives have been synthesized and some scaled up. Nalas Engineering Services, Inc. has assisted in the process development of these extremely dangerous materials. Traditional methods for process development were avoided due to safety concerns of isolating large quantities of the intermediates and products. Non-traditional sampling methods, analytical methods and kinetic model development were used to gain process understanding for these materials. In-situ tools included in-situ infrared, focused beam reflectance measurement, and particle vision and microscopy. Off-line tools included atomic absorption, high performance liquid chromatography, karl fischer, differential scanning calorimetry and NMR. The combination of these tools assisted the chemical engineers in solving some very intersting process challenges.