Destruction of smokegrenades under water
Publish date: 2002-01-01
Report number: FOI-R--0280--SE
Pages: 20
Written in: Swedish
Abstract
The methods to burn smoke grenades underwater have been studied in big scale and 150 grenades have been burned. The experiment have shown that it is possible to burn smoke grenades in big scale under water, but the method have to be adjusted to work in industrial scale. To find a buyer for the formed zinc chloride a number of manufactures have been contacted. Unfortunately we have not been able to produce a zinc chloride that is pure in of to meet the specifications from the manufactures. Alternative methods that involve grinding the unburned smoke grenades and then separate the different starting materials have also been tested. The method works rather well producing almost pure zinc metal and hexachloretahane. The problem is to get rid of the hexachlorethane. The following conclusions have been drawn: 1) To burn smoke grenades under water a effective burning method have to be developed. 2) To make the method profitable a buyer of the zinc chloride have to be found that can except the purity degree of the substance. 3) The method to separate the starting materials may be used in an other way. Separating for example HMX from magnesium. 4) New energetic materials ought to be developed to be easy to separate and reuse.