Research Underway to Make Explosives Greener
By: WROC-TV
Updated: September 3, 2008
Certain explosives may soon get a little greener and a little more predictable.
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California said they've successfully added environmentally friendly solvents to an explosive called TATB. They say that the ionic liquids they've added will not only be less harmful to the environment, but improve the chemical quality and purity of the material.
Enhanced quality leads to explosives that are safer - less likely to react violently - when subjected to impact or heat.
The work appears in the September issue of the journal Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics.
