Hydroxylamine Vs. Hydrogen Peroxide: a Comparative Study on Storage Stability

The chemical industry often handles, stores, and processes molecules like hydroxylamine (HA) and hydrogen peroxide (HP), which can easily undergo thermal decomposition reactions. Hence, the ideal perspective is to have simple quantitative criteria to use during the equipment design phase, accommodating the possibility of exothermic degradations of substances to enhance process safety and avoid thermal runaways. To this aim, the Frank-Kamenetskii theory of self-heating (FKT) can be involved in determining the critical size of a storage vessel to guarantee the intrinsic safe storage of chemically hazardous materials. Eventually, the proposed design strategy will be implemented to design storage equipment for two commercial aqueous solutions of HA and HP, respectively. In this way, it will be possible to compare the inherent thermal hazard linked to the storage of these mixtures, evaluating the threshold vessel size above which the self-heating phenomenon of the materials becomes no longer controllable. The HA and HP mixtures can be used alone or together in chemical processes as oxidants or precursors for producing hydroxyl radicals. Under comparable conditions free of impurities and organic contamination, the results show that the system made of 50 %w hydrogen peroxide is more stable than hydroxylamine. This is reflected in a larger characteristic size of the storage vessel able to handle appropriately self-heating phenomena potentially leading to runaway.