The influence of magnesium powder on the thermal behavior of Al-CuO thermite mixture

In this work, the effects of magnesium additive on the thermal behavior of Al/CuO thermites were verified. According to differential scanning calorimetry data, addition of the magnesium powder did not initiate the reaction between micron-Al and nano-CuO. But this additive had a significant effect on the heat of reaction of nano-Al/nano-CuO system and increased the heat flow of nanothermite from 949.5 to 2168.6 J g(-1). Besides, the ignition temperatures of both nano-Al/nano-CuO and nano-Al + micron-Mg/nano-CuO systems were almost identical. In the next step, the dependencies of activation energy (E (a)) on extent of conversion (alpha) for thermite reactions were obtained using Kissinger-Akahira-Sunose isoconversional method. Based on the kinetic data, the nano-Al + micron-Mg/nano-CuO system had higher activation energy than the nano-Al/nano-CuO. Thus, an attractive alternative to Al/CuO nanothermite may be nano-Al + micron-Mg/nano-CuO system, which is cheaper, safer and more energetic than Al/CuO nanothermite.