Large-Scale Analysis on Accelerated Aging of Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) Powders in Detonators

Pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN) has been used extensively in commercial detonators and other explosive applications for many decades. Here, we show the results of a comprehensive 1.5 year aging study of PETN in commercial detonators, addressing batch-to-batch variations, surface area changes, and comparisons of aged loose powders side-by-side with identically aged detonators. Function time analysis of the aged detonators has also been provided and discussed in the context of powder aging. This large-scale, statistically relevant study addresses long-standing questions on PETN aging without the complications from making comparisons between multiple batches of material. We have evaluated the aging time required to reach the maximum measured amount of PETN coarsening and estimated an activation barrier of ∼123 kJ mol^-1, which is higher than literature values reported by Gee et al. It is possible that this discrepancy is due to the fact that that this study cannot quantify the relative contributions of surface diffusion versus sublimation processes. At the lower temperatures of 50 and 60 °C, we assume that surface diffusion dominates over sublimation processes, even at longer aging times. At the higher temperature of 75 °C, we assume that both surface diffusion and sublimation contribute at the early time points, which are included in the Arrhenius analysis for coarsening.