| dc.description.abstract | Runaway reactions are characterized by the exponential increase of the temperature and pressure of a chemical system that could potentially lead to the explosion of the reactor or storage vessel of concern. The consequences of a runaway reaction may be very severe in terms of life, economic and environmental losses.
Emergency relief systems (ERS) are the ultimate mitigation method to prevent vessel explosion following the runaway reaction. In the case of the runaway of gas producing chemical systems, ERS sizing requires the assessment of the maximum gas production rates. Significant work was performed in the 1980’s by the Design Institute for Emergency Relief Systems to develop vent sizing methods for runaway reaction cases. While vent sizing methods developed for vapor systems provided relatively good results, those developed for gas generating systems (hybrid or gassy) tend to be oversized and still need to be improved. A very significant part of this work includes the improvement of the current methods for the measurements of the maximum gas production rate for such systems.
The objective of this thesis work is to experimentally study the decomposition of a gas generating system under runaway condition using adiabatic calorimetry and assess the maximum gas production rate corresponding to the runaway. A critical analysis of the current methodologies to interpret experimental data to compute the maximum gas production rate was done. The decomposition of Cumene Hydroperoxide (CHP) in Cumene was chosen for the study. | en |
