Preparation And Application Of Metal Oxide/Carbon Nano Composite Burning Catalyst

In order to solve the aggregation of nano-catalyst for propellant burning, this paperis to study a dispersion solution of nano-catalyst, which is different from surfacemodification of nano-catalyst, i.e., the aggregation of nano-catalyst is prevented bymeans of particular surface and microstructure of inert support material. The preparationmethod of the composite material of nano scaled metal (Cu, Cu-Cr, Fe) oxides and carbonwas studied. The catalytic effect of metal oxide/carbon composite nano catalysts onthermal decomposition of oxidant, such as ammonium perchlorate (AP) and trimethylenetrinitramine (RDX), and the burning rate of HTPB propellant were studied in detail. Theburning rate of HTPB propellant added with metal oxide/carbon catalyst was predictedby Artificial Neural Network (ANN), which has excellent self-study and self-adaptability.The metal oxide/carbon material, which was prepared by using metal cation asprecursor of metal oxide and carbon material as the inert support, was thoroughly studiedupon Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) observation and X-ray diffraction (XRD)analysis. The results showed that iron oxide, copper oxide and copper-chromium oxidewere dispersed on the surface of the carbon support in nano-scaled size. Mainly, theactive component in metal oxide/carbon material is iron oxide, copper oxide and CuCrO₂for iron oxide/carbon (Fe₂O₃/C), copper oxide/carbon (CuO/C), and Cu-Cr/carbon(Cu-Cr/C), respectively.When 1% weight percent of Fe₂O₃/C and the commercial iron oxide was added intoRDX/AP/Al/HTPB propellant, the burning rate increments of Fe₂O₃/C and commercialiron oxide were 56% and 31% respectively, the catalytic efficient of Fe₂O₃/C was 81%higher than that of commercial iron oxide, the pressure exponent of Fe₂O₃/C was about0.48～0.50 and that of commercial iron oxide was 0.54 in the range of 4～10 MPa. When 2% Fe₂O₃/C was added, the burning rate increment at 6 MPa and 10 MPa reached 69%and 78% respectively. Compared with the catalytic effects of tert-butyl-ferrocene (TBF)and catocene (GFP), the results showed that when the added amount of Fe₂O₃/C, TBFand GFP was 0.5 %, the burning rate increment of Fe₂O₃/C was similar to those of TBFand GFP, the pressure exponents of Fe₂O₃/C, TBF and GFP in the range of 4～10 MPawere 0.47, 0.37 and 0.37 respectively.When 0.5% weight percent of Cu-Cr/C and commercial CuCr₂O₂ were added intoRDX/AP/A1/HTPB propellant, the burning rates at 6 MPa increased from 6.31 mm·s^-1(without catalyst) to 8.82 and 8.69 mm·s^-1 respectively; and the pressure exponent in the range of 4～10 MPa increased from 0.35 (without catalyst) to 0.38 and 0.49 respectively.Upon the catalytic burning data, the BP network structure was built and the relationbetween the content of catalysts and burning rate of propellant was simulated. Thepredicted burning rate using the trained network had good agreement with experimentaldata, implying the attractive potential of using artificial neural network to simulate thecatalytic effect of Fe₂O₃/C.