Simulated Rainfall-Driven Dissolution of TNT, Tritonal, Comp B and Octol Particles

• Main Authors: Taylor, Susan, Lever, James H., Fadden, Jennifer, Perron, Nancy, Packer, Bonnie
• Other Authors: ARMY ENVIRONMENTAL COMMAND ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND MD
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Ammunition and Explosives; Solid Wastes Pollution and Control; Water Pollution and Control; *PARTICLE SIZE; *RAINFALL; *HIGH EXPLOSIVES; *SOILS; *GROUND WATER; OCTOL; RDX; PARTICLES; TRITONAL EXPLOSIVES; TNT; FIRING TESTS(ORDNANCE); HE(HIGH EXPLOSIVES); SURFACE SOILS; DISSOLUTION; COMP B EXPLOSIVES; SERDP COLLECTION; SERDP(STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM); Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory
• Online Access: http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA538061; http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA538061

Live-fire military training can deposit millimeter-sized particles of high explosives (HE) on surface soils when rounds do not explode as intended. Rainfall-driven dissolution of the particles then begins a process whereby aqueous HE solutions can enter the soil and groundwater as contaminants. We dripped water onto individual particles of TNT, Tritonal, Comp B and Octol to simulate how surface-deposited HE particles might dissolve under the action of rainfall and to use the data to verify a model that predicts HE dissolution as a function of particle size, particle composition and rainfall rate. Particle masses ranged from 1.1 to 17 mg and drip rates corresponded to nominal rainfall rates of 6 and 12 mm h 1. For the TNT and Tritonal particles, TNT solubility governed dissolution time scales, whereas the lower-solubility of RDX controlled the dissolution time of both RDX and TNT in Comp B. The large, low-solubility crystals of HMX slowed but did not control the dissolution of TNT in Octol. Predictions from a drop-impingement dissolution model agree well with dissolved-mass timeseries for TNT, Tritonal and Comp B, providing some confidence that the model will also work well when applied to the rainfall-driven, outdoor dissolution of these HE particles. Published in Chemosphere, v75 p1074-1081, 2009. Prepared in collaboration with U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, NH. The original document contains color images.