Abstract
Explosion studies in multiatmosphere H2‐F2‐O2 mixtures show that the pressures at which such mixtures spontaneously explode are greatly affected by treatment of the explosion cell surfaces prior to filling the cell with H2‐F2‐O2 mixtures. This strong effect of surface conditioning indicates that the observed explosions in H2‐F2‐O2 mixtures (covering a wide range in [F2]/[H2] ratios) with total pressures up to 10 atm result from surface‐associated initiation processes rather than from purely volume‐initiated third‐limit processes. These results agree with a kinetic model involving H2O2 production with a chain formation of H2O at the surface.