SBIR-STTR Award

ANW seeks to develop a new class of propellant bonding agents based on its proprietary titanyl compound discovered in March 2007. This titanium based compound has already demonstrated an ability to act as a plastic and epoxy cross-linker that improves performance beyond existing specialty chemical additive levels. ANW believes similar improvements can be achieved in solid fuel propellant systems. ANW proposes researching and identifying compatible chemical reactants that will chemically bond to its titanyl molecule and act as a cross-linker in the Navys solid fuel propellant systems. ANWs proposal is broken into 6 tasks including synthesizing reactive linkers, identifying the best linkers, characterizing physical properties of the derivatives and analyzing both chemical and physical characteristics of the bonding agent. Improvements in stability and mechanical properties will improve propellant aging, frequency of insensitive munitions (IM) and will reduce life- cycle costs while improving safety for existing solid fuel systems.

Benefit:
This technology is restricted under International Traffic in Arms Registration (ITAR) which limits the commercial opportunities with this project. However, this technological advance could have significant implications with all of the solid fuel systems currently in use and planned by the US military and could present a reasonable size commercial opportunity by itself. The breadth of impact will only be known once the project is well underway and other DoD and NASA systems evaluated by ANW. As part of its on-going commercial activities, ANW is already scaling up the manufacturing capacity of the base titanyl compound to meet anticipated product demand from the plastics and epoxy industries. Establishing a manufacturing base of the titanyl compound will ensure that commercial quantities of the enhanced Propellant Bonding Agent (PBA) are available.

Keywords:
tactical propellant, tactical propellant, strategic propellant, solid fuel propellant system, fuel system aging, Insensitive Munitions, bonding agent, propellant bonding agent, high energy propellant