Characterization of products formed in the thermal degradation of ethyl diazoacetate by different scale experimental techniques

This paper is focused on the development of specific procedures for the identification and the quantitative analysis of products formed in “runaway” conditions, in the framework of hazard assessment. Three different experimental techniques were used to simulate “runaway” conditions: thermogravimetry, low phi-factor adiabatic calorimetry and a specific large-scale device. The products formed were identified and quantified by different analytical techniques, as FTIR spectrometry and GC-MS. The thermal decomposition of etyldiazoacetate, a building block of industrial importance, was used as a test reaction to validate the methodologies developed. The results obtained allowed the comparison of the potentiality of the different techniques and a preliminary investigation of the influence of the scale of the experiment on the experimental results.