The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives - Sciencemadness Dot Org

240 NITRIC ESTERS
absorbs or reacts chemically with the first decomposition products
and destroys them. He says:
Better still, are very small additions of diphenylamine, which
is admirably suited for the stabilization of smokeless powder,
since it readily takes up the nitrous acid. Nitrohydrene
80/20 or 75/25, containing only 0.1 to 0.2 per cent of diphenylamine,
was stored for seventy-five days at 55°C.
without undergoing decomposition. The samples merely
showed a coloration and became dark green, a phenomenon
which also occurred but to a less extent with a check sample
of nitroglycerin containing the same quantity of diphenylamine.
After seventy-five days the nitroglycerin still had a
slight odor of diphenylamine, but the nitrohydrene smelled
slightly acid, somewhat like sour milk, but not like nitrous
or nitric acid.
Similar samples of 100 grams each of the above nitrohydrene
containing 0.1 per cent diphenylamine have been
stored by the author for more than eight years in diffuse
daylight at room temperatures, about 20°C. So far they have
remained unchanged, have no acid odor, and show no signs
of decomposition. . . . From this it is evident that nitrosugar
dissolved in nitroglycerin, although its stability does
not reach that of the latter, is sufficiently stable for practical
purposes, particularly in the presence of stabilizers.
The individual nitrosugars are stabilized similarly by diphenylamine,
and certain ones of them, specifically nitromaltose, nitrolactose,
and nitrosucrose, have been able by means of that substance
to find a limited industrial application.
Solutions of cane sugar in glycol, and of glucose and lactose in
glycerin, have been nitrated to produce mixtures of nitric esters
comparable to nitrohydrene.
Nitroarabinose (I-Arabinose tetranitrate),
Nitroarabinose is prepared, 69 as indeed the highly nitrated
sugars in general may be prepared, by adding concentrated sulfuric
acid drop by drop to a solution of the corresponding sugar
in concentrated nitric acid at 0°. It consists of colorless monoclinic
crystals which melt at 85° and decompose at 120°. It is
readily soluble in alcohol, acetone, and acetic acid, and insoluble
in water and ligroin. It reduces Fehling's solution on warming.
It is but little stable above 50°, and is easily exploded by shock.
6» Will and Lenze, Ber., 31, 68 (1898).