Wikidata facts
- Subclass of
- chemical decomposition
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- partially coincident with
- cracking
- Commons category
- Thermal decomposition
- exact match
- purl.obolibrary.org/obo/ENVO_01000840
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Encyclopedic overview
Processes in the thermal degradation of organic matter at atmospheric pressure.
Thermal decomposition, or thermolysis, is a chemical decomposition of a substance caused by heat. The decomposition temperature of a substance is the temperature at which the substance chemically decomposes. The reaction is usually endothermic as heat is required to break chemical bonds in the compound undergoing decomposition. If decomposition is sufficiently exothermic, a positive feedback loop is created producing thermal runaway and possibly an explosion or other chemical reaction.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “thermal decomposition” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.