U.S. Ammo Plant Amid $168M Renovations
The U.S. Army and ATK are making progress on a $168-million modernization of the government-owned, contractor-operated Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Radford, Va.
The facility, in operation since the early 1940s, produces 26 million pounds of nitrocellulose per year in more than 200 configurations. It is North America's sole provider of nitrocellulose, the key ingredient needed to make propellant for ammunition fired from tanks, artillery, mortars, and small- and medium-caliber guns.
The facility is amid renovations funded by Congress over the past several years, service officials said. In fact, there are plans to begin production in a new, $230-million facility by 2016.
"If you drive through the plant, you will see a WWII-, Korea- and Vietnam-era infrastructure that we are slowly trying to upgrade and modernize," said Lt. Col. Antonio Munera, who commands the Radford facility.
The plant, spread out over more than 4,000 acres, makes nitric and sulfuric acid from ammonium and mixes it with wood and cotton fibers to make nitrocellulose.
"The future vision for the nitrocellulose plant is to take this process that is spread out and very manual in nature and very energy-inefficient and put it all under one roof similar to modern plants that are used today all over Europe," said Tony Allison, ATK chief engineer for energetics. "Anything that gets shot downrange by our men and women in uniform somehow, some way, uses nitrocellulose. Most often it is the most abundant ingredient in the propellant that propels the projectile out of the gun barrel or out of the rocket tube headed downrange."
Renovations thus far have included replacing a floor with acid-resistant concrete. New instruments in the acid tanks will help keep the mixture homogeneous.
"Currently, we measure the tanks by lowering a float down with a chain. When it hits the acid, it floats. We are installing level instrumentation on each tank, air-operated valves going into and out of the tanks. When it gets too full, it will automatically close," said Brian Sowers, an ATK acid process engineer.
New "deflaking" equipment will allow the fibers in the nitrocellulose to move more easily as they are mixed.
"This is important in controlling muzzle velocity and in controlling the pressure build-up in the gun barrel. The bottom line is by taking these conglomerates out, we get a much more consistent propellant product," Allison said.
Some manual operations have been automated, such as mixing the chemicals needed to produce nitrocellulose.
"What that did for us was allow us to double our throughput while reducing our operating costs by about 50 percent. That was key in meeting the demand for small and medium-caliber ammo during the current conflicts that are going on right now," said Allison.
The process of making nitrocellulose, which is still mostly done manually at the facility, involves an elaborate mixture of chemicals and materials that require special treatment and preparation.
"To make nitrocellulose they either start with wood pulp from special trees in Canada or cotton linters which are these little fibers that grow on the outside of cotton balls. We mix that with acid - nitration is what they call it. You get a certain amount of nitrogen and attach it to the wood pulp. Then they dry it and it becomes nitrocellulose, which is the basic constituent for all smokeless powders," said Andrew Crickenberger, vice president of strategy and business development, ATK Armament Systems.
As part of this effort, the Radford facility moves 160 million pounds of acid every year.
"The powder they use in small-caliber ammunition is about 95 percent nitrocellulose. Some of the higher performance propellants get less nitrocellulose and they put things like nitroglycerine in. A double-based propellant will have nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose," Crickenberger said.
Nitrocellulose is formed by a specific series of chemical reactions.
"The nitration process is where we are chemically converting the material. The rest of the nitrocellulose line is a series of boiling and rinsing steps under controlled chemical conditions to break down the unstable by products that are inherently formed as part of the reactions to get stable pure nitrocellulose," said Allison.
Despite the pricy renovations, the aging plant is reaching the end of its life.
"It is a 1941 coal-powered power plant running steam lines miles down and across the river. We are fixing steam traps, leaks and lines but it is a continuous process. You never can fix or stop it. When it is an old line that is broken here, what you find two weeks later is 10 feet down from it you have created another problem," said Kent Holiday, an ATK vice president and general manager of the Radford facility.
A deputy Army chief of staff expressed support for Radford's continued modernization.
"We want to make sure we are set for the future - that we are in balance and have enough supply to meet the demand. We are in an Army that sees persistent conflict as the norm, which means we are going to be shooting and using ammunition for the foreseeable future," said Lt. Gen. Stephen Speakes, deputy chief of staff for programs.
U.S. Ammo Plant Amid $168M Renovations - Defense News
