Small scale adiabatic dewar techniques to determine exothermic onset temperatures

The heightened focus on safety in the chemical process industry has resulted in a growing trend to provide reliable thermochemical information before process scale-up. The exothermic onset temperature of compounds is of key concern. The small scale adiabatic dewar age (SSAD) test, developed at Merck Research laboratories, is used to determine exothermic onset temperatures. These tests are conducted under nearly adiabatic conditions using specially designed dewar sample cells and commercially available programmable calorimeters. The dewar cell method offers a rapid and accurate method to enhance standard test procedures and allows measurement of auto catalytic behavior using small samples.The SSAD technique is applicable to both solids and liquids and has the following advantages: 1) small sample size, 2) ability to handle compounds in which exothermic activity is accompanied by large pressure increases without damaging experimental equipment, 3) accurate determination of exothermic onset temperature, 4) ease of experiment set-up, 5) ease of data interpretation and 6) rapid experimental turn around time.The determination of the exothermic onset temperature using the SSAD technique will be presented and compared to data obtained using standard and isothermal age techniques.