Agamassan is a

porous Porosity or void fraction is a measure of the void (i.e. "empty") spaces in a material, and is a fraction of the volume of voids over the total volume, between 0 and 1, or as a percentage between 0% and 100%. Strictly speaking, some tests measure ...

substrate used to safely absorb acetylene and thus allow the transport, storage and commercial use of the otherwise unstable gas. It was developed and patented by the

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

Nobel Laureate and industrialist

Gustaf Dalén Nils Gustaf Dalén (; 30 November 1869 – 9 December 1937) was a Swedish Nobel Laureate and industrialist, engineer, inventor and long-term CEO of the AGA AB, AGA company and inventor of the AGA cooker and the Dalén light. In 1912 he was award ...

. Dalén was prominent in developing applications for acetylene. Acetylene can readily explode when in liquid or solid form or while being pressurized, if it is pure. Dalén himself was blinded in an acetylene explosion. In 1896, French chemists Georges Claude and Albert Hess discovered that large quantities of acetylene could be dissolved in

acetone Acetone (2-propanone or dimethyl ketone), is an organic compound with the formula . It is the simplest and smallest ketone (). It is a colorless, highly volatile and flammable liquid with a characteristic pungent odour. Acetone is miscib ...

and rendered nonexplosive. As the liquid was reduced by consumption or cooling, explosive acetylene gas would collect in the space above the liquid's surface. The solution was to compress acetylene in a porous medium. Before Dalén's work, numerous attempts were made to find a mass sufficiently elastic to withstand shock without crumbling and producing cavities filled with explosive acetylene gas. Acetylene is shipped and stored in metal cylinders filled with agamassan, which is half-filled with

dimethylformamide Dimethylformamide is an organic compound with the formula ( CH3)2NC(O)H. Commonly abbreviated as DMF (although this initialism is sometimes used for dimethylfuran, or dimethyl fumarate), this colourless liquid is miscible with water and the maj ...

(DMF) or acetone. The acetylene is dissolved in the DMF or acetone. Such cylinders are safe to transport and use. In Swedish, the porous filler is known as "AGA-massan", which would translate as "AGA mass", "AGA body", or "AGA compound". AGA was the company Dalén founded. The compound originally consisted of, among other things, asbestos, cement, and coal. The 1930 US patent also mentions kieselguhr ( diatomaceous earth).

References and further reading

About Gustaf Dalén
*{{US patent, 1767514: Porous mass for the storage of explosive gases and method for making same; issued June 24, 1930 Materials Industrial gases