Catalytic study on thermal decomposition of Cu-en/(AP, CL-20, RDX and HMX) composite microspheres prepared by spray drying

This paper mainly describes a spray drying method for the preparation of a variety of composite microspheres of energetic materials, including AP, RDX, β-HMX, and ε-CL-20, which are commonly used in composite modified double base propellants. The composite microspheres were prepared with catalyst Cu-en to increase the contact area between the energetic materials and the catalyst. The results of powder XRD and EDX suggest that copper is mainly distributed in the interior of AP and ε-CL-20 composite particles, but mainly dispersed on the surface of β-HMX and RDX microspheres. The data of the DSC test show that the catalytic effects of the composite microspheres exhibit the best performance, compared with the simply physically mixed catalyst and the energetic materials. The exothermic peak temperatures of AP, RDX, β-HMX, and ε-CL-20 are reduced to 305.4 °C, 228.6 °C, 280.2 °C and 232.0 °C, respectively. The results show that the composite microspheres can enlarge the contact area between the catalyst and the energetic materials thus enabling an enhanced catalytic effect.