Better safe than sorry

The Swiss Safety Institute in Basle offers flexible test methods for the identification of critical chemical processes. Reaction calorimetry in semi-micro scale is a surprisingly versatile method. It requires only small amounts of reactants, is carried out in short time and still provides considerable sensitivity.
Before carrying out chemical processes in pilot or production plants, they are subjected to a thorough risk analysis. This is currently acknowledged as good industrial practice. In many countries this is even required by legislation. Therefore risk studies are available and well documented for new processes. But what about older processes? A manager of a production plant faced the problem of documenting risk analyses for a range of such processes, for which no safety data according to current practice were available. Reaction calorimetric studies in a lab reactor would have required considerable lab capacities and time. Where to start now? In collaboration with the Swiss Safety Institute in Basle a screening program was established in order to identify the most critical processes, based on the heat of reaction and the thermal stability of the reaction mixture. For this purpose special reaction calorimetric methods in the semi-micro scale (about 1 ml) are available at the institute.