Design New Lacquer Preparation Facility for RDX and HMX Production at Holston Army Ammunition Plant (HSAAP)

The existing Lacquer Preparation Facility at Holston Army Ammunition Plant, Kingsport, TN, comprising of Buildings 149/150 and a chemical/solvent storage tank farm, is the only facility capable of producing lacquer batches for the production of all plastic bonded explosives (PBX). The facility receives, stores, handles, and processes the binder materials and solvents in manufacturing the lacquer in explosives production.

Mobile wagons are used to transfer lacquer from the facility to the explosives production buildings. Lacquer is a mixture of dissolved rubbery polymer materials in a solvent that is used as a binding agent in reducing the sensitivity of RDX, HMX, and TATB based explosives formulations. A plasticizer instead of lacquer may also be prepared in the facility to be used as a feedstock raw material in formulating RDX based explosives.

The Lacquer Facility supports legacy explosives and the new Insensitive Munitions (IM) explosives being developed at HSAAP.This effort will require Architect-Engineering (A-E) design services for a new Lacquer Preparation Facility with all the necessary process equipment to support annual production capacity expansion with a minimum of 15M lbs of RDX and 2.5M lbs of HMX based formulations.

This will ensure continuity of operations in maintaining the production capability, quality, safety, and environmental requirements to meet modern standards and permits. This new facility will support the expansion modernization of HSAAP RDX, HMX, and IMX production capacity to provide a viable capability to meet current/future DoD explosives production.