Flash Point Testing: Enhance Safety, Optimize Quality of Petrochemical Products

Flash point testing enhances safety and ensures that everyday petrochemical products are of consistently high quality.

Transporting liquid or semi-solid goods via road, rail, or air can be hazardous if the goods can catch fire easily. In this context, the flash point of a substance is used to determine and, most importantly, classify its hazard potential with regard to its flammability. The lower the flash point, the greater the risk. The hazard classification of a substance serves to ensure that appropriate safety measures can be taken during packaging, transport, and storage.

Many national and international organizations require and govern such hazard classification of potentially dangerous substances and stipulate appropriate precautions during transportation. These regulations minimize potential risks during road, rail, and air transport.

Another main area of application for flash point testing lies in the product specification of petrochemical products such as jet or diesel fuel. To maintain a defined and consistent quality of such products, national and international specifications define parameters that these products must fulfill before they are placed on the market.

What is the flash point, and how is it measured?

The flash point test can be summarized as a procedure in which a test specimen is filled into a temperature-controlled test cup, and an ignition source is applied to the vapors produced by the test specimen. The aim of the test is to determine at what temperature the vapor-air mixture is flammable.

The most common definition of the flash point, according to standard methods, e.g., ASTM D93 and DIN EN ISO 2719, is the lowest temperature of a sample, corrected to a barometric pressure of 101.3 kPa, at which the application of an ignition source causes the vapor of the sample in the test cup to ignite momentarily.

It is important to note that the value of the flash point is not a physical constant but depends on the instrument type and the test procedure used. The measured flash point of a substance may differ by several °C if the same substance is measured with different flash point tester types. For this reason, a flash point can only be defined in terms of a standard test method, and no general valid correlation can be guaranteed between results obtained by different test methods or with a test instrument different from that specified. For this reason, each product specification or classification requirement clearly states which testing standard and which instrument type must be used to determine the respective flash point.

Standards-compliant test equipment

Anton Paar’s state-of-the-art flash point tester family covers a wide application range. It covers samples such as solvents, diesel fuel and biodiesel blends, jet fuels, bitumen, paints and varnishes, flavors and fragrances, and lotions and creams – during all production, transport, and storage stages. Anton Paar’s flash point testers include open- and closed-cup testers for measurements across a temperature range from -35 °C up to +410 °C.

Full compliance with national and international standard methods is combined with maximum precision. Each instrument offers a unique feature set for maximum usability and the highest safety for operators in the lab. The high quality of the instruments and the outstanding lifetime of the key components guarantee a lasting and reliable instrument.

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