Flash Point of Binary Mixtures

A model for calculating the Flash Point (FP) of binary mixtures was developed and applied to ethanol/n-octane mixtures. The non-ideality of the mixture was taken into account. This non-ideality leads to values of FP lower than those of the pure components. The effect of pressure on the FP was also quantified. It has been found that, at pressure lower than 1 atm, the FP significantly decreases. This suggests that, when dealing with industrial processes operated under such pressure conditions, the FP present on the material safety data sheet is not conservative, being measured at 1 atm.