Ethylene oxide (EO) is a very versatile compound with considerable energy in its ring
structure. Its reactions proceed mainly via ring opening and are highly exothermic.
Under some conditions, it is known to undergo a variety of reactions, such as
isomerization, polymerization, hydrolysis, combustion and decomposition
Due to its very reactive characteristic and widely industrial applications, EO has been
involved in a number of serious incidents such as Doe Run 1962, Freeport 1974, Deer
Park 1988 and Union Carbide Corporation’s Seadrift 1991. The impacts can be severe in
terms of death and injury to people, damage to physical property and effects on the
environment. For instance, the Union Carbide incident in 1991 caused one fatality and
extensive damage to the plant with the property damage of up to 80 million dollars.
Contamination has a considerable impact on EO reactivity by accelerating substantially
its decomposition and playing a key role on EO incidents.
In this work, the reactivity of EO with contaminants such as KOH, NaOH, NH4OH, and
EDTA is evaluated. Useful information that is critical to the design and operation of
safer chemical plant processes was generated such as safe storage temperatures (onset
temperature), maximum temperature, maximum pressure, temperature vs. time, heat and
pressure generation rates as a function of temperature and time to maximum rate using
adiabatic calorimetry. A special arrangement for the filling-up of the cell was
constructed due to the gaseous nature and toxicity of EO. A comparison of their thermal
behavior is also presented since several contaminants are studied.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2683 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Dinh, Linh Thi Thuy |
| Contributors | Mannan, Sam M. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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