Characterizing explosives and blasting emissions

Conference · Sun Dec 31 04:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:398342

Johnson, M B ^[1]; Bacon, D P ^[2]

---

1. Army Dugway Proving Ground, UT (United States)
2. ECO, L.C., Salt Lake City, UT (United States)

With the advance of science, rise of public interest in environmental matters, and continuing erosion of air quality, Federal and state regulators are demanding an increasing complex array of data concerning emissions produced by burning and detonating energetic materials. The US Department of Defense, one of the world`s largest consumers of energetic materials, now must characterize combustion products resulting from open burning/open detonation disposal operations. The catch-all phrase ``below detection limits`` no longer satisfies the regulators who now want testing to delve into the ppt level for volatile organic compounds and ppt level for semivolatile organic compounds. Regulators are also expanding their scope of interest and may soon be asking for emissions data on training operations such as artillery firing. Providing this type of information is no longer an impossibility. The Army, as the single manager of conventional munitions for the three military services, anticipated the tightening of data requirements and in the mid-1980s funded a study into technologies to characterize emissions produced by open-air destruction of propellants, explosives, and pyrotechnics. This study, conducted in cooperation with the US Environmental Protection Agency, has resulted in a unique testing system which gathers data from small detonations and burns and can accurately scale the data to allow characterizing combustion products of field open-burning/open-detonation disposal operations. The system and its technologies apply to other operations involving energetic materials. This paper describes the system (known as the BangBox Testing System), its component technologies, emerging results, and potential applications in the explosives and blasting industries.

• OSTI ID: 398342
• Report Number(s): CONF-9502142--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
AIR POLLUTION
AIR POLLUTION MONITORING
AIR POLLUTION MONITORS
CHEMICAL EXPLOSIONS
CHEMICAL EXPLOSIVES
COMBUSTION
DESIGN
EMISSION
EXPLOSIVE FRACTURING
MILITARY FACILITIES
ORDNANCE
PROPELLANTS
SURFACE MINING
UNDERGROUND MINING
VOLATILE MATTER
WASTE DISPOSAL