The U.S. Department of Defense requires an environmentally benign synthesis route to manufacture military grade trinitrotoluene (TNT), which eliminates the production of red water arising from the sulfiting process for removing unsymmetrical trinitrotoluene isomers. We have found that by using a novel nitrating system, N2O5 in dichloromethane, the proportion of metasubstituted nitrotoluenes can be suppressed, and improvements have also been made to the di- and trinitration steps. As a result, TNT with a set point near that of the Mil. Spec. can be made by our process, without the need for sulfite washing; after recrystallization it exceeds the specification.
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Millar et al. (2011) studied this question.
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