Abstract
Pesticides and plant protection products are widely used in modern industrial agriculture. Unfortunately, the thermal degradation and combustion of that chemicals can lead to emission of various toxic products that may cause a threat to humans and to the environment. Unwanted combustion can occurred during incidents, accidents or major accidents. Therefore, the determine flammability behaviour and knowing what thermal degradation products may be formed are significant for an analysis and risk management of production processes, storage and distribution of those chemicals.
In this paper, the thermal degradation and combustion of two of antifungal pesticides triadimenol and tebuconazole, and plant protection products contain that substances were investigated. Measurements made by the cone calorimeter were used to determine the parameters associated with the rate of heat release from selected plant protection products. The determined parameters facilitated drawing conclusions on the size of the fire, its growth rate and consequently, the quantity and quality of the smoke emission. The Simultaneous Thermal Analysis that combines thermogravimetry and differential scanning calorimetry was used to determine thermal characteristics of pesticides and plant protection products. The products obtained from the thermal degradation were analyzed by infrared spectroscope with Fourier transformation. Moreover the steady state tube furnace (ISO TS 19700) specifically to generate products from real fires under different conditions. The samples containing toxic products were analyzed by gas chromatograph with mass spectrometer .
The obtained results showed that pesticide undergo both thermal degradation and oxidation during thermal degradation in air. The type and yields of thermal degradation and combustion products depended most strongly on a temperature and oxygen concentration during experiment. The main substances identified under all tested conditions were: substituted benzenes, aldehydes, aliphatic hydrocarbons and polycyclic hydroca
