Investigations on the Staudinger explosion and its prevention

About 100 years ago, Hermann Staudinger discovered a series of "strange explosions" involving alkali metals and halocarbons, which were not only very violent, but they were also initiated by mechanical shocks. Later these explosions were referred to as "Staudinger explosions". However, most of the resulting investigations by Staudinger were lost during World War II. Over the last 100 years, these explosions have been used as classroom experiments, but they pose a significant threat in chemical laboratories when chlorinated solvents are inadvertently mixed with alkali metals. To date, no simple methods are known to desensitize such abnormally high impact-sensitive systems, so that resulting interventions are rare, but demand lots of time and effort to desensitize these systems. Due to the particular threat, it was investigated how such a high-energy system can be phlegmatized or desensitized. The admixture of an indifferent solvent, such as an alkane, has proven to be useful, which under favorable conditions leads to an increase in the impact energy required for the explosion by more than 300%, thus making the mixture manageable for application forces.