Preparation and performance of environmental friendly Sulphur-Free propellant for fireworks

Abstract

Black powder is often used as propellant in the fireworks industry, but the sulphur in the black powder will pose great risks to the environment and human health. Although there are sulphur-free propellant with metal powder and smokeless propellant prepared from expired military gunpowder to solve the problem, the high sensitivity and huge explosive power of the mental powder and instability of the expired military gunpowder lead to low security in actual application. Therefore, sulphur-free propellant which can replace black powder is urgently needed. In this study, a discharge height test was conducted for the sulphur-free environmental protection formulation [potassium perchlorate (70%), potassium hydrogen terephthalate (10%), carbon (11%), ferrocene (1%), phenolic resin (7%), calcium stearate (2%)] optimized by an orthogonal test. The thermal explosion in critical temperature was used to determine the thermal stability of sulphur-free propellant and black powder, then compared with combustion heat. The preesure-time test was used to compare the peak pressure of this two propellant. The impact, friction and flame sensitivity were also measured. It is thought that sulphur-free propellant can replace the black powder as the new environmental-friendly propellant in the fireworks industry with low sensitivity and excellent storage performance, and have great potential in application.