Kinetics and Combustion Behavior of Atomized Zn-Mg Alloy Powder.

ABSTRACT

Using pyrolants instead of warhead charges can release red light and thick smoke for target practice to highlight the safety of the impact point and dud disposal. In order to find the ideal material, the combustion and kinetic properties of two Zn-Mg alloys at critical proportions were investigated. Thermogravimetry/differential scanning calorimetry (TG/DSC) experiments in pure oxygen were conducted with atomized Zn-Mg alloy powder in the ratio of 73 and the ratio of 82 with three particle diameters under different heating rates. The kinetic parameters of the six materials were obtained by ASTM E698 and Ozawa-Flynn-Wall (OFW) methods, indicating that the activation energy (Eα) of the 73 Zn-Mg alloy powder was lower than that of the 82 Zn-Mg alloy powder when the particle size distributions are similar. By the method of nonlinear multivariate regression, the oxidation reaction of Zn-Mg alloy powder was divided into two steps. The proportion of mass gain of the first-step reaction of 73 Zn-Mg alloy powder was 0.462-0.518, and the proportion of mass gain of the first-step reaction of 82 Zn-Mg alloy powder was 0.138-0.228. Reaction mechanism functions of the two-step reaction of Zn-Mg alloy oxidation were derived as f(α) = (1 - α)n(1 + kcat·α). The results of combustion experiments showed that the pyrolants composed of 73 alloy can burn stably to produce satisfactory smoke and light signals, while the pyrolants composed of 82 alloy cannot achieve this. The 73 Zn-Mg alloy powder is an ideal ingredient for pyrotechnic compositions.