Ultrafine Aluminum Powder for Propellant Applications

Ultrafine aluminum powder (UFAP) is commonly used in a wide variety of applications like rocket propellant additives, thermite mixtures, paints and hydrogen generation, etc due to its reduced ignition delay and temperature thus leading to complete combustion of particles. Though UFAP can be synthesized by a number of techniques, radio frequency induction plasma (RFIP) offers inherent advantages over other techniques. The purity of the powder is ensured since RFIP setup has no electrodes. The productivity is also reasonably high ~0.5-1 kg/hr, depending upon the material and its feed rate. The precursor powder carried by a carrier gas passes through the injection probe and gets delivered into the plasma chamber. The vaporized precursor is then subjected to a drastic quench as it comes out of plasma chamber.