Process Safety & Energetics

Temperature, heat, pressure and kinetics of reaction or decomposition under normal or runaway conditions. Heat capacity of substances. Calorimetry for chemical process risk assessment

The process safety laboratory is essential for any chemical manufacturing site. Regardless of the quantities synthesized, every process step and every reagent or product must be assessed with regard to its thermal stability in order to minimize risks. Our solutions, in particular Calvet calorimeters, have become standard in these laboratories. Quick Screening At an early stage, you can gain a fast indication of thermal instability through testing small samples with a DSC. It measures the temperature and heat of decomposition. Thermal Stability You can test more in-depth any suspect materials from the screening stage. Due to the central role of gas releasing reactions in plant process hazards, samples of about 5-10g are heated in cells equipped with a pressure sensor. Adiabatic Tests With an adiabatic reaction calorimeter (A.R.C.), you can test samples at minor to no heat loss conditions. Adiabatic conditions are a worst case scenario, but they are quite realistic for large plant vessels that lose heat slowly. Modelling Thermokinetics and thermal safety software serve as a complement to all process safety studies. Scenarios can be modelled to reduce the number of actual experiments, speeding-up process safety testing. Process Understanding After initial screening and/or thermal stability testing it's necessary to understand the desired chemical reaction. You can use Reaction Calorimetry to determine how much heat is given out under normal operating conditions. The focus here is on heats of reaction, heat flows and gas evolution.

ENERGETIC MATERIALS

Temperature, heat, pressure and kinetics of decomposition.

Energetic materials testing with calorimetry