Producing Burn-Rate Suppressants in a Uniform Crystalline Structure for Solid Rocket Propellants

Abstract. Oxamide is a thermally stable diamide with high nitrogen content and strong hydrogen bonding capacity which is widely used as a slow-release fertilizer in agriculture and a burn-rate suppressant in solid rocket propellants. The physical structure of the oxamide material varies depending on its intended area to be used. Even though small and irregular crystalline oxamides could be acceptable and widely used in fertilizer industries, complex products such as solid rocket propellant mixtures require standardized sizes and rounded uniform crystalline shapes due to high density packing requirements of propellants. This study proposes a new method for production of oxamides with uniform crystalline structures by using basic catalyst on the batch reaction. The base was used as both a catalyst and a crystal structure modifier. In this study, high yields of crystals of uniform size and structure in a short reaction time were resulted and reliable outcomes were obtained by using analytical methods such as SEM, grain size analysis and XRD.