Combustion-supporting effect of boron powder on aluminum powder

Abstract

Aluminum powder is a very important component in both explosives and propellants. Due to the formation of a dense oxide layer Al2O3 at the surface of aluminum, it is very difficult for aluminium powder to react completely, which is the biggest problem at present. For improving the completeness of the reaction of aluminum powder, six kinds of combustion accelerants, ferrocene, ammonium perchlorate, Fe2O3, fluororubber F246, perfluorosurfactant HX-12 and boron powder were selected to study their combustion-supporting effect on aluminum powder by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) method. The research results show that the six reagents have certain combustion-supporting effects, but the combustion-supporting effect of boron powder is particularly significant. Two extra exothermic peaks appeared as adding small amount of boron powder to aluminum powder. When the content of boron powder is 10 wt % of aluminum powder, the total exothermic heat is more than twice than that of pure aluminum powder FLQT-4. In short, boron powder is a very promising combustion accelerant.