Size Exclusion High Performance Liquid Chromatography Analysis of a Cellulose Acetate-Ammonium Nitrate Gas Generator Propellant

Problems involving mix-to-mix reproducibility for TAL-704 a Talley Industries of Arizona cellulose acetate-ammonium nitrate gas generator propellant, led to the rejection of several mixes. As a result, a series of studies were initiated to determine the causes of these problems. One such study involved semiquantitative, size exclusion high performance liquid chromatography SEHPLC analysis of TAL-704 and its components. A comparison of SEHPLC results for acceptable versus failed mixes of TAL-704 showed that Each mix sample analyzed exhibited five 5 characteristics peaks with correspondingly similar retention volumes measured by both ultraviolet and refractive index detectors. These peaks were mainly attributed to cellulose acetate 5.51 ml, dinitrophenoxy-ethanol DNPE dimer 8.62 ml, DNPE monomer 9.16 ml, DNPE impurity 9.75 ml, anid 4-phenylmorpholine 10.11 ml respectively The majority of the mix components analyzed contained one or more impurities in significant amounts greater than 1 Analyses of components, for which lot changes had between acceptable and failed mixes, revealed that both the DNPE and the 4-phenylmorpholine contained proportionally greater quantities of impurities.