Improvement of the Production Efficiency of HBIW Using New Catalysts

CL-20 is the most energetic conventional explosive available for military use. The overall aim of the high energy material research community is to increase yield and reduce cost of CL-20. All synthetic routes used to prepare the CL-20 depended on the condensation reaction of benzylamine with glyoxal for preparation of HBIW intermediate. In the presence of HCOOH as catalyst, yield of 75% is reported. In this paper we investigated the effect of lewis acid catalyst on the yield of HBIW. The results suggested that the more efficient catalyst (such as MgSO4, ZnCl2, CuSO4, Mg(ClO4)2 increase yield, 25% more than previously reported.