Investigation of how pressure influences the thermal decomposition behavior of azodicarbonamide

Azodicarbonamide (ADC) is a type of azo compound with outstanding application performance, it is always used as a blowing agent in the production of foamed plastics. Based on previous studies, it has been considered harmless in its practical application process. Nevertheless, our research has overturned this standpoint and denoted the special exothermic behavior of ADC under specific use processes, especially when it was placed in a high-pressure system. In this study, a simultaneous thermogravimetric analyzer (STA) was employed to preliminarily evaluate the thermal stability of ADC under atmospheric pressure. Followed with calorimetric experiments by high-pressure differential scanning calorimetry (HP DSC), the exothermic behaviors of ADC under different initial furnace pressures were investigated. The obtained results revealed that the thermal decomposition rate of ADC linearly increases along with increasing testing pressure, which shows a highly autocatalytic characteristic. The peak power of DSC curve breathtakingly reached 73 W/g when the initial testing pressure was set at 4 MPa, and the overall decomposition heat reached 1261 J/g with the scanning rate at 4 °C/min. Furthermore, the decomposition mechanism, thermal hazards, and explosion potential were comprehensively evaluated in this study for the first time.