Multifarious reactive chemicals have bloomed the energy, chemical and other industrial fields for decades, while they are also the major origin of fire and explosion accidents in industry. It is of great importance to assess the thermal hazards of the reactive chemicals.

Already, as the intelligent era of Industry 4.0 comes, assessments on thermal hazard of reactive chemicals is facing more challenges with the centralized and large-scale modern industrial parks and warehousing.

This month, Prof. SUN Jinhua from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) was invited by Progress in Energy and Combustion Science to review the his work on assessing the thermal hazards of reactive chemicals in industry. The review discussed the three-step strategy and practical methods for the thermal hazard evaluation of reactive chemicals with the research results of Prof. SUN Jinhua's team in thermal safety of reactive chemicals for more than two decades and recent international research trends, covering the perspectives of the future development.

The review firstly summarized the chemical classification standards of different authorities, and discussed the relationship between current classifications and assessments of thermal hazards with typical reactive chemicals.

Secondly, towards the comprehensive assessment of thermal hazards of reactive chemicals, the article pointed out three fundamental steps covering identification of reaction mechanism, calculation of reaction kinetics and thermodynamics, and characterization of thermal safety properties. Here, theoretical and experimental methodologies and engineering tools for thermal hazard assessment were also discussed and compared, including molecular scale analysis and mathematical simulations, microscale and mesoscale experiments, and chemical reactivity and incompatibility analysis tools and so on.  

The work summarized the logical association and hierarchical relationship between the assessments and the classification criteria of reactive chemicals in the above three steps.

Finally, the review prospected the future of assessments on the thermal hazard of reactive chemicals, and suggested that in laboratory-scale thermal hazard assessments, the relationship between reaction characteristics, classification, and thermal hazards be considered together. Authors also encouraged researchers combined information and communication technology (ICT) and internet of things (IoT) and other advance techniques to analyze or predict the evolution of fire and explosion incidents in varied scenarios.

A schematic overview of current research status and future topics towards the comprehensive assessment of thermal hazards of reactive chemicals in the era of Industry 4.0. (Copyright from Elsevier B.V., 2020)

In the past two decades, Prof. SUN Jinhua’s team have been devoted to evaluating the thermal hazards of reactive chemicals and developing prevention methods for fire and explosion in industry, especially on nitro compounds, mixtures of oxidants and combustibles, organic peroxides, lithium-ion battery materials and full batteries. Their researches were funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

See more details in the review: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pecs.2020.100832

(Written by ZHAO Xiaona, edited by LI Xiaoxi, USTC News Center)