Minimum Burning Pressures of Water-based Emulsion Explosives.

This manuscript describes a protocol to measure the minimum pressure required for sustained burning of water-based emulsion explosives. Pumping water-based emulsion explosives for blasting applications can be very hazardous, as demonstrated by a number of pump accidents around the globe in the last decades, including some that resulted in fatalities. In Canada, the recognition of this hazard has led to the development of pumping guidelines that were endorsed by both the explosives industry and the Explosive Regulatory Division of the Canadian government.

Thermal hazard assessment of nitrobenzene/dinitrobenzene mixtures.

During the production of nitrobenzene by an adiabatic nitration process, the main byproducts are mono and dinitrophenols as well as 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (picric acid) and 1,3-dinitrobenzene. The byproducts can become concentrated if a distillation step to remove high boiling point impurities is used. In the present work, representative samples of nitrobenzene containing 20-30% dinitrobenzene and less than 1% dinitrophenol, 1% picric acid, and 1% sodium hydroxide were tested by Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) and Accelerating Rate Calorimetry (ARC) to investigate their thermal stability relative to the pure substances.