Mathematical Prediction of Thermal Runaway Conditions During the Nitration of DNT to TNT

The reasons for the runaway during the nitration of DNT to TNT have been investigated mathematically. All the data required for chemical kinetics has extracted from Kozak’s experimental work. M. M. Khader had proposed a new technique, Picard-Pade method, and this work has been employed in the present work to solve the mathematical model and the results obtained were well substantiated using Kozak’s experimental work. The influence of different mixtures on the temperature growth has been investigated and discussed in detail by dividing the temperature curve into three regions depending upon the change in the slope with respect to time. All the mixture compositions considered were within the range of Orlova’s work. The influence of DNT’s concentration and its dissociation in the presence of sulfuric acid on the runaway reaction has been explained clearly with the numerical solutions. Within the considered mixture compositions, the mixture with controllable temperature growth is a 40–30–18–12 mixture and the mixture with uncontrollable temperature growth is 63–7–25–5. The computational tool used in this work to solve the mathematical model in MATLAB.