(481a) Designing a Continuous Flow System to Safely Nitrate Alkylamines to Nena’s
AIChE Annual Meeting
2019
2019 AIChE Annual Meeting
Catalysis and Reaction Engineering Division
Reaction Engineering in Pharmaceuticals and Fine Chemicals
Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - 8:00am to 8:15am
Nitroethylnitramines (NENA-compounds) are useful in propellants and explosives as energetic plasticizers. The NENA compounds of interest include methyl, ethyl, propyl, butyl NENAâs. These Alkyl-NENAâs contain a nitrate ester (-ONO2) as well as a nitramino (-NH-NO2) functional groups and are known to effectively plasticize cellulosic polymers such as nitrocellulose. Manufacture of NENA compounds presents significant process safety challenges due to the potential energy of the materials, thermal stability, and the highly exothermic reactions. Previous investigators have provided stern warnings of fire and âspark spheresâ forming in the reactors at laboratory scale. Highly exothermic reactions pose significant scaleup challenges that are compounded with unstable, high energy products. These challenges can be addressed with chemical engineering solutions that scale such as continuous processing. The various phases of the two-step nitration have been studied for years with a focus on safety. Heat flow calorimetry, flow NMR, off-line analytics (e.g. HPLC, GC), and in situ spectroscopy contributed to establishing reaction kinetics and overall process understanding to safely produce this family of compounds. In addition, critical safety data were generated using thermal analysis (e.g. DSC, TSu, ARC) of the various processing streams. The combined results and design of a safe continuous manufacturing process for NENAâs will be discussed.