The purpose of this work was to determine the safe shelf life of single-base propellants. The kinetic parameters relative to the consumption of the stabilizer diphenylamine (DPA) added to the propellant were determined as a function of the storage and ageing time. High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) with spectrophotometric detection was used to determine the DPA percentage before and after the artificial ageing at 60, 70 and 80 ºC. The experimental data were very well adjusted to a pseudo-first order kinetic model and the respective kinetic constants are 8.0-10-3 day-1 (60 ºC); 1.9-10-2 day-1 (70 ºC); 1.2-10-1 day-1 (80 ºC). The activation energy was calculated as 130 kJ mol-1 and the half-time for depletion of the DPA at the hypothetical temperature of 40 ºC of storage was estimated as being 6 years.

The thermal decomposition of hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene (HTPB)/ammonium nitrate (AN) based propellants, so called smokeless formulations, and raw materials were investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and thermogravimetry (TG). The thermoanalytical profile of different components and of propellant were evaluated and the Arrhenius parameters for the thermal decomposition of the propellant sample were determined by the Ozawa method. The kinetic parameters of the thermal decomposition of propellant samples were determined by DSC measurements. The values obtained for activation energy (Ea) and pre-exponential factor were 163 kJ mol-1 and 1.94x10(6) min-1.

This paper shows different aspects related to the application of different thermal analysis techniques in the study of energetic materials. The criteria used to choose the best technique and an exact approach to adjust the experimental data with a proper model are here discussed. The paper shows how to use the different thermal analysis results to help develop new compounds, to study the stability of some energetic materials and their compatibility, and the conditions necessary for a secure storing environment.