Fire Safety Science Digital Archive

The paper briefly reviews the thermal explosion model and summarises a study of the thermal decomposition and thermal explosion of some solid organic peroxides. The object of the study has been to consider the use of the Frank-Kamentskii model of thermal explosion for predicting safe conditions for storage and transport of unstable substances in general. It is concluded that experimental determination of the critical ambient temperatures for the thermal explosion of small charges of given shape and size is likely to be the most flexible and reliable procedure for predicting largescale behaviour with the aid of the theoretical model. But any procedure should be accompanied by, at least, a rudimentary exploration of the decomposition kinetics of the material under examination in order to detect the presence of factors likely to interfere with the extrapolation to full-scale.