Prevention of explosion accidents by employing boron instead of aluminium in flash powder

Abstract

In Fireworks Industries, Aluminium is one of the main chemicals which exhibit excellent performance in the fireworks display. However, fine Aluminium powder is pyrophoric and releases a lot of heat and becomes the cause for hazards in fireworks industries. In this research work, the composition of flash powder has been modified by blending with boron powder, in order to minimize workplace accidents and the explosive nature of fireworks. Simultaneously, the amount of aluminium in the flash powder is reduced such that the quality of the flash powder needed for making firecrackers is not affected. The boron blended flash powders are subjected to various tests in order to measure the impact energy and frictional sensitivity. The frictional sensitivity of the boron mixed flash powder is found to be higher than the frictional sensitivity of Aluminium-based flash powder. The impact energy required to induce explosion is measured and compared for both the flash powders. These results confirm that the boron-based flash powders display remarkable properties; they explode under higher frictional load and need high impact energy to ignite them. The thermokinetic characteristics of the flash powders blended with boron are also obtained using Accelerating Rate Calorimeter (ARC). The characteristics reveal that the explosive mixture containing boron exhibits higher decomposition temperature, higher self-heat rate and higher pressure during detonation than the conventional mixtures. Besides the evaluation of characteristics of flash powder, cake bombs were also fabricated using boron blended flash powders and the noise level during the explosion was also recorded. The results obtained from these tests ensure the fact that blending of boron in flash powder reduces workplace accidents since the mixture obtained possesses higher frictional sensitivity and thermal impact energy.