The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives - Sciencemadness Dot Org

304 SMOKELESS POWDER
caliber powder, such as that for the 16-inch gun, it usually contains
only one. The cord or rope of powder as it comes from the
press is passed over pulleys or through troughs to a rotary cutter
where it is cut into short cylinders about 2.1 to 2.5 times as long
as their diameters or it is coiled up in a fiber cannister in which
it is taken to another room for cutting. In France the colloid is
FIGURE 76. Smokeless Powder Manufacture. (Courtesy E. I. du Pont de
Nemours and Company, Inc.) Finishing Press. The colloid is extruded
in the form of a perforated cylinder which is later cut into pieces or
grains.
pressed through slots from which it emerges in the form of ribbons
which are cut into strips of a length convenient for loading
into the gun for which the powder is intended.
5. Solvent recovery. The green powder contains a large amount
of ether and alcohol which presents a twofold problem: (1) the
recovery of as much of the valuable volatile solvent as is economically
feasible, and (2) the removal of the solvent to such an
extent that the finished powder will not be disposed either to give
off or to take up much volatile matter or moisture under changing
atmospheric conditions. For the recovery of the solvent, the pow-