Study on the spontaneous combustion risk and thermal decomposition characteristics of nitrocellulose

Abstract

Nitrocellulose (NC) is an important raw material for industrial products and is widely used in military and civilian industries. However, accidents of nitrocellulose burning and explosion are common. In order to test the thermal hazards of NC and guide its safe production, storage, transportation and use, an auto-ignition temperature tester was used to study the effects of different factors (quality, heating rate, nitrogen content) on NC spontaneous combustion. And differential scanning Calorimetric method was used to test the heat flow curve of nitrocellulose at a heating rate of 5 C/min after adding different content of diphenylamine (DPA) to determine the thermal kinetic characteristics of the initial reaction exotherm temperature, maximum peak temperature, reaction enthalpy change, etc. The results show that after adding 1%, 2%, and 3% DPA, the ΔT of NC increases sequentially by 4, 3.12, and 3.10 . DPA as a stabilizer has good compatibility with NC, which can effectively slow down the thermal decomposition speed of NC and prolong the storage life of NC.