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_cU) were measured and the standard enthalpies of formation (Δ_fH°) were derived using the CODATA values for the standard enthalpies of formation of the combustion products. Whilst the measured Δ_fH° of DADP (Δ_fH°=?598.5 ± 39.7 kJ mol^?1) could not be compared to any existing literature value, the measured Δ_fH° value of TATP (Δ_fH°=+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.