Thermal hazard accident investigation of hydrogen peroxide mixing with propanone employing calorimetric approaches

Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), historically, due to its broad applications in the chemical industries, has caused many serious fires and explosions around the world. Its thermal hazards may also be incurred by an incompatible reaction with other chemicals, and a runaway reaction may be induced in the last stage. This study applied thermal analytical methods to explore the H2O2 leading to these accidents by incompatibility and to discuss what might be formed by the upset situations. Thermal hazard analysis contained a solvent, propanone (CH3COCH3, so-called acetone), which was deliberately selected to mix with H2O2 for investigating the degree of thermal hazard. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and vent sizing package 2 (VSP2) were employed to evaluate the thermal hazard of H2O2. The results indicated that H2O2 is highly hazardous while mixed with propanone, as a potential contaminant. The time to maximum rate (TMR) was used as emergency response time in the chemical industries. Therefore, TMR of H2O2 was calculated to be 70 min for runaway reaction (after T-0) and TMR of H2O2/propanone was discovered to be 27 min only. Fire and explosion hazards could be successfully lessened if the safetyrelated data are properly imbedded into manufacturing processes. Crown Copyright (C) 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.