A calorimetric study of a commercial monomer autopolymerization: an accident investigation.

In this work the analysis of an incident in transport of dangerous goods is proposed. The objective of this study is to contribute to the determination of the causes that brought about the self-polymerization of commercial divinylbenzene (DVB 63%) contained in an isothermal container, in order to prevent this incident from happening in the future. Time and conditions during transport/storage of monomers (in particular storage temperature) are very important factors that affect their aptitude of self-polymerization. In particular one hypothesis has been investigated: that the quantity of oxygen in the tanker was insufficient to activate properly the inhibition mechanism. Consequently, the self-polymerization of DVB and the inhibition mechanism of 4-tert-Butylcatechol (TBC) have been studied as a function of temperature and monomer exposure to air with Differential Scanning Calorimetry and Adiabatic Calorimetry techniques.