INSUS computes dimensionless safety parameters from live process data and the reaction's characterised kinetics, and classifies whether current conditions carry elevated thermal runaway risk. Operations and safety teams keep the decision. No control authority.
01
Monitoring and alerting only. Read-only, with no write access.
02
Interlocks, relief systems and PSM stay exactly as they are.
03
Every flag names the parameters driving it.
The problem
Thermal runaway is a well-documented hazard in batch and semi-batch reactors, including polymerisation. Risk depends on interacting thermal and kinetic factors that process safety engineers capture in dimensionless parameters such as the Semenov, Damköhler and Stanton numbers. Those parameters are used in design, but during operation safety often still rests on margins fixed at that stage. Elevated risk is typically seen only once temperature or pressure trends already look abnormal.
The shift
Interlocks, relief systems and process safety management stay exactly as they are. What changes is whether the team gets a continuous, explained risk classification alongside them.
Today
With INSUS
How it works
This fits OptiStudio as a monitoring and decision-support layer beside existing process safety systems. Access is read-only. Every flag goes to people who decide the response under existing PSM.
Connect
Connect read-only to the reactor DCS or SCADA and process historian for temperature, pressure, feed rate and composition, together with kinetic and thermodynamic characterisation where it exists, and near-miss or incident records.
Understand
Compute dimensionless activation energy, Semenov number, heat of reaction, Damköhler number and Stanton number from live process data and the reaction characterisation for this reactor and reaction system.
Predict
Classify the current operating condition in the reaction's runaway-prone or stable region. For safety classification, miss rate matters more than headline accuracy, and results must be validated on this plant's data.
Advise
When a condition classifies as elevated risk, the operations and safety team receives an alert naming which parameters are driving it. They review it and decide the response. The reactor is not adjusted.
Verify
Compare classifications with actual operating history and near-miss or incident records so accuracy and miss rate can be tracked and the model refined for this reactor and reaction system.
Getting started
For specialty-chemical operations with characterised batch or semi-batch reactions. Delivered through OptiStudio as reactor-safety decision support. Expert Services can help with data assessment and validation. Monitoring and alerting only. Read-only. No control authority.
Related for specialty chemicals
Thermal runaway risk prediction sits beside polymerization target-property optimization and SVHC Article 33 compliance tracking on the same specialty chemicals operation.
Thermal runaway risk is often judged against fixed design margins. This use case classifies elevated risk from live process data and dimensionless safety parameters so operations and safety teams can review conditions earlier.
Historical and live reactor temperature, pressure, feed rate and composition, plus kinetic and thermodynamic characterisation sufficient to compute the parameters. Near-miss logs help validation. No new sensors when that data already exists.
No. It classifies and alerts. Any resulting adjustment is a human operations or safety decision. Access is read-only, with no control authority.
No. It is a monitoring layer alongside existing process safety management. PSM, relief systems and interlocks are unchanged. It is not part of protective or safety instrumented systems.
A 2025 peer-reviewed study in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research classified runaway risk from dimensionless safety parameters for specific batch and packed-bed systems. Those published results are not INSUS results and do not transfer automatically to your reactor without plant-specific validation.
Through OptiStudio as monitoring and decision support. Expert Services can support data assessment, characterisation readiness and validation with your process safety team.
Without enough reaction characterisation, the approach cannot be applied. Accuracy is reactor- and reaction-specific. The system does not forecast time to runaway and does not write to the DCS.
Specialty chemicals · Reactor safety
Start with a data assessment on one reactor and reaction system: whether your process data and characterisation support computing the parameters, and what they would have said about conditions you have already run.
