Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The thermal explosion of benzoyl peroxide, in the form of the commercially pure solid and as a paste with plasticiser, has been studied experimentally with the object of determining the extent to which small-scale explosion trials are likely to provide a useful guide to the behaviour of unstable compounds in storage or during transport. A comparison of (1) self-heating and explosion data and (2) isothermal decomposition data, principally in terms of the derived activation energies and of heats of reaction estimated by different routes, has shown that the self-heating and explosion behaviour is broadly consistent with expectation on the basis of the generalised stationary state thermal explosion model of Frank-Kamenetskii. In detail, the behaviour is complicated by melting of the peroxide during decomposition and mixing due to gas evolution. It has been concluded that a simple graphical treatment of small-scale critical explosion data, based on the model, can give a useful guide to the practical hazard.