Contamination of Explosive Materials with N-Methylpyrrolidin-2-One (NMP)

Several explosive materials,viz.,triaminotrinitrobenzene,(TATB), hexanitrostilbene (HNS), 1,1-diamino-2,2-dinitroethene (FOX-7), that had been processed using the solvent N-methylpyrrolidin-2-one (NMP) were found by 1 H NMR and head-space GC-MS to be contaminated with small amounts (0.15-0.2 wt% for TATB, 0.1- 0.5 wt% for HNS, and 0.1-0.2 wt% for FOX-7) of this solvent. Attempts to reduce the level of contamination by a variety of methods were only partially successful.