Learnig from accidents : Investigation and risk analysis on an incident in the transport and storage of Monomers

In this work the analysis of an accident 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 iso-container, in order to prevent this accident to happen in the future. Time and conditions during transport and storage of monomers (in particular the storage temperature) are very important factors, that affect their self-polymerization aptitude. In particular one hypothesis has been investigated: probably the quantity of oxygen in the tanker was insufficient to activate properly the inhibition mechanism. From this consideration 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.