Taming the Beast: Measurement of the Enthalpies of Combustion and Formation of Triacetone Triperoxide (TATP) and Diacetone Diperoxide (DADP) by Oxygen Bomb Calorimetry

Low‐melting paraffin wax was successfully used as a phlegmatizing agent to perform semi‐micro oxygen bomb calorimetry of spectroscopically pure samples of the sensitive explosive peroxides TATP and DADP. The energies of combustion (Δ c U ) were measured and the standard enthalpies of formation (Δ f H °) were derived using the CODATA values for the standard enthalpies of formation of the combustion products. Whilst the measured Δ f H ° of DADP (Δ f H °=−598.5 ± 39.7 kJ mol −1 ) could not be compared to any existing literature value, the measured Δ f H ° value of TATP (Δ f H °=+151.4 ± 32.7 kJ mol −1 ) did not correlate well with the only existing experimental value and confirmed that TATP is an endothermic cyclic peroxide.