Exothermic reaction of ethylene oxide (EO) contacting with rust is believed to be responsible for explosion accidents of EO distillation tower. In order to systematically study the influence of iron rust/Fe2O3 on the thermodynamic parameters of runaway reaction of EO aqueous solution, the adiabatic calorimetry tests of EO aqueous solution?rust/Fe2O3 system were carried out by adiabatic calorimeter Venting Size Package-2 (VSP-2). The thermodynamic parameters such as the initial exothermic temperature, the maximum exothermic temperature and pressure, time to maximum reaction rate, the adiabatic temperature rise, the variation of temperature and pressure during runaway reaction process were obtained for EO aqueous solution?rust/Fe2O3 system. The results showed that under the experimental conditions the runaway reaction characteristics of EO aqueous solution?rust system were not obvious. There were no distinct temperature and pressure rise during reaction, and the maximum temperature and pressure of the system were lower than 200℃ and 1.0 MPa respectively. For Fe2O3 contacting with EO aqueous solutions, the initial exothermic temperature, the maximum reaction temperature and pressure decreased with increase of EO aqueous solution concentrations, and the time to maximum reaction rate was less than 30 minutes. The initial exothermic temperature of 30wt% EO aqueous solution?Fe2O3 system was close to 100℃. The initial exothermic temperature of pure EO?Fe2O3 system was about 150℃ and the adiabatic temperature rised close to 180℃. The addition of polymer in the Fe2O3?EO aqueous solution system had no obvious effect on the catalytic induction of the runaway reaction, and the severity of the runaway reaction was lower than that of the Fe2O3?EO aqueous solution system. Therefore, the catalytic induction of Fe2O3 solids on the runaway reaction of EO and its aqueous solution was more obvious compared to the on-site rust, and with the increase of EO mass fraction, the consequences of runaway reactions were more serious. The study on runaway reaction behavior of EO with rust would be useful for EO distillation process design and explosion accident prevention.
Jingru LIU Manping JIN Lei ZHAO Fan ZHANG Wei XU Ning SHI
. Effect of rust on runaway reaction of ethylene oxide aqueous solution[J]. The Chinese Journal of Process Engineering, 2018
, 18(S1)
: 138
-145
.
DOI: 10.12034/j.issn.1009-606X.20180166
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