Thermokinetic analysis of the stability of acetic anhydride hydrolysis in isothermal calorimetry techniques

Several severe fires and explosions have happened in the past couple of decades. The major cause is addressed to the process reaction initiator. The cumulative heat effect can occur during processing, storage, and transportation. Acetic anhydride, one of the most crucial polymerization initiators, has been investigated in the present paper regarding its high thermal hazard risk. To analyze the thermal stability of acetic anhydride, a reaction calorimeter was used to determine the thermal parameters for stability assessment. We examined acetic anhydride samples under isothermal conditions of 40, 50, and 60 °C and considered factors such as stirring rate, feed rate, and temperature. The findings imply that the optimum operating environment for hydrolysis of acetic anhydride is 50 °C. The Arrhenius equation was used to determine the apparent activation energy of acetic anhydride hydrolysis as 57.77 kJ mol–1. A multiple nonlinear regression model was established to further confirm that the acetic anhydride reaction system was autocatalytic, along with an n-order reaction.