PROCESSING OF TRINITROTOLUENE WATER EMULSIONS

When disposing of trinitrotoluene (TNT), the TNT-melt must be pre-trea ted. One possibility is to emulsify the melt in water after the TNT ha s been dismantled from the explosive charge. Production of these emuls ions can be accomplished using emulsifying machines based on the rotor -stator principle, e.g., ring gear dispersing machines or colloid mill s. Droplet size reduction results from the normal and tangential stres ses applied to the droplet as it is subjected to laminar or turbulent flow fields. Knowledge of the droplet size and droplet size distributi on of the dispersed phase is important to determine the quality of an emulsion and the emulsification process. In this paper, results from t he discontinuous production of TNT-water emulsions are presented. In a ddition, the use of laser diffraction spectrometry for analyzing TNT d roplet size is described.