Explosion Behavior of Ethanol-Ethyl Acetate Mixtures in Air: Synergistic Effects

Alcohol-ester mixtures and, specifically, ethanol-ethyl acetate mixtures are widely used as solvents in the packaging industry. Such mixtures are flammable and, thus, pose serious safety issues. In order to design adequate prevention and mitigation measures for the process industries where flammable substances are stored, handled and used, reliable safety data are required. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the key parameters for classifying flammable liquids are the flash point and the boiling point [1]. However, for liquid fuels, explosive conditions may also arise when fuel evaporation and its mixing with air occur. At temperatures higher than the flash point, liquid fuel evaporation may result in the formation of a flammable cloud, the accidental ignition of which may lead to explosion [2]. In the literature, efforts have mainly been focused on measuring and predicting the flash point of ethanol, ethyl acetate, and their mixtures (see, for example, [3]). On the contrary, the explosion behavior of such systems has been essentially neglected. This is especially true for ethanol-ethyl acetate mixtures. In this work, a preliminary characterization of the explosion behavior of ethanol-ethyl acetate/air was performed. To this end, closed-vessel explosion tests were carried out considering a fixed ethanol-ethyl acetate composition in stoichiometric air. In order to explore the possibility of a synergy between the two fuels composing the mixture, explosion tests were also extended to stoichiometric ethanol/ and ethyl acetate/air.