Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 5
Preparation and Properties of Liquid
Nitrate Ester
Nitrate esters are sorts of liquid compounds, which were
first discovered and had
powerful explosion strength [
1
]. As one of early well-known liquid explosives,
nitroglycerine was the first explosive to be used in mining and military [
2
]. It played
a great role in the World War I and II [
3
,
4
]. In the past half a century, the
alternatives for nitroglycerine, including glycol dinitrate, diethyleneglycol dinitrate,
triethyleneglycol dinitrate, mannitol nitrate, nitrodiethanolamine, nitroisobutylni-
troglycerine, butanetriol trinitrate, nitroerythrite, butylenes glycol dinitrate, pen-
taetriol trinitrate, pentaerythritol trinitrate, nitro-sugar, and nitro-starch, have been
developed one and another in many countries [
3
]. Among them, triethylene glycol
dinitrate, butanetriol trinitrate, pentaetriol trinitrate, and their mixtures have been
especially studied in reference [
5
]. The preparation process and performance of
those nitrate esters, which have been widely applied in aviation, aerospace, pro-
pellant, military, and natural science and technology, are similar with those of
nitroglycerine [
6
8
].
The nitrate esters have also been used in human health and medicine
-
fields
[
9
,
10
]. For example, single alkane nitrates play an important role in clearance and
puri
cation of energy and environment [
11
,
12
]. There are about 20 liquid nitrate
esters with most bright potential in application and production over the world. They
will be introduced in the following sections.
5.1 Characteristics of Nitrate Esters
5.1.1 Structure of Nitrate Esters
The basic feature of nitrate esters is the nitroxyl group of
NO
2
. The ester
group in nitrate esters is of an oxygen atom connecting with a carbon atom, that is,
the nitrate esters belong to O-nitro compounds. This was con
C
O
-
-
-
rmed by the
hydrolysis or reduction of nitrate esters to alcohols [
3
,
13
,
14
], as the following
reaction equation.
