Improved Efficiency by Adding 5‐Aminotetrazole to Anthraquinone‐Free New Blue and Green Colored Pyrotechnical Smoke Formulations

Abstract

AbstractPyrotechnical smoke formulations are predominantly used in the military sector for obscuring or signaling purposes. For decades, the performance was the only point of interest and no toxicity issues have been considered. Although fuels like sulfur have already been replaced in colored smoke formulations, the main ingredient still remains the dye. In the past few years certain highly toxic anthraquinone dyes, e.g. benzanthrone and vat yellow 4 have successfully been replaced by Solvent Yellow 33 (SY33). Additionally, colored smoke formulations suffer from a low efficiency and there is no published information about the yield like the amount of produced aerosol of in‐use formulations. To face this issue, we designed several new blue and green smoke formulations containing 5‐aminotetrazole (5‐AT) as additional gas generator to increase the efficiency. Maintaining the environmental risks in an acceptable range, we applied copper(II) phthalocyanine (CuPc) for blue and a mixture of CuPc/SY33 for green formulations. A self‐developed aerosol collecting setup was used to investigate the formulations.