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Chemical Process Evaluation

Characterise Your Thermal Hazards Before They Become Incidents

Sigma-HSE's thermal stability laboratory gives your engineering and R&D teams the confidence to design, scale, and operate hazardous processes with defensible data your EHS function can take straight to audit.
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91% Rated Excellent Turnaround

90% Rated Excellent Response to Contact

83% Rated Excellent for Report Content

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Uncharacterised thermal hazards create risk you cannot manage. Get the data to identify, control, and eliminate them.

Reliable thermal hazard data is the starting point for every safe process design, storage decision, and regulatory submission.

IDENTIFY

Develop a Safe Operating Envelope for Your Materials and Processes

Unidentified thermal hazards in your processes, equipment, and operations create risk you cannot manage. Thermal stability testing gives your teams the data to identify, quantify, and mitigate those hazards before they become incidents.

  • Characterise your hazard profile: establish onset temperature, heat of reaction, and pressure behaviour so your teams can identify risks and implement the right controls.
  • Set defensible process limits: set operating temperature limits your engineering teams can justify, document, and defend, reducing the risk of over-engineering under regulatory scrutiny.
  • Support scale-up decisions: identify and mitigate hazards at each development stage, ensuring your process grows safely without costly redesigns or regulatory hold-ups.

Sigma-HSE gives your engineering, operations, and compliance teams a common, data-driven foundation to identify, understand, and mitigate process risk with confidence.

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industrial dryer
OPTIMISE

Refine Your Dryer Parameters and Profiles Without Compromising Safety

Thermal incidents in drying operations stop production, damage equipment, and trigger regulatory intervention. Thermal stability testing gives your process engineers and R&D teams the data to maintain operational continuity and eliminate unplanned shutdowns.

  • Establish the true safe temperature ceiling: define the onset of exothermic activity under realistic drying conditions, maintaining safe production while unlocking throughput improvements without costly equipment changes or production trials.
  • Validate drying profiles for novel formulations: confirm your proposed temperature profile is safe for the specific material, eliminating the operational uncertainty that leads to batch losses and process interruptions.
  • Reduce the risk of incidents and production losses: testing costs a fraction of a single thermal incident, lost batch, or unplanned shutdown, protecting your operations across every production run that follows.

Sigma-HSE gives your process engineers and R&D teams the data to maintain safer, more reliable, and more productive drying operations without compromising safety or continuity.

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CONTROL

Ensure Safe Storage, Processing and Transport Controls for Your Hazardous Materials

DSEAR, ATEX, COMAH, and UN transportation regulations place clear obligations on how you store, handle, and ship hazardous materials. Thermal stability testing gives you the accredited data to meet those obligations and demonstrate compliance.

  • Meet UN transport and classification requirements: UN regulations require tested SADT data to correctly classify and ship self-reactive substances across borders.
  • Define safe storage conditions under DSEAR and ATEX: understand maximum safe storage temperature and time-to-maximum-rate so your operations teams can specify appropriate, compliant controls.
  • Strengthen your COMAH safety case: accredited thermal hazard data provides the defensible, third-party validated evidence your COMAH safety report demands, reducing exposure to non-conformity findings and enforcement action.

Sigma-HSE gives your compliance programme the accredited, defensible data it needs to satisfy DSEAR, ATEX, COMAH, and UN transportation and classification requirements across every site and every material.

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Understand the hazardous nature of your materials in 4 simple steps

Obtaining and integrating chemical reaction hazard data into your process has never been so easy.

Step 1: Contact Us

Get in touch with one of our experts. We'll take the time to understand your process, unit operations, and testing requirements, then generate a bespoke quote so you only test what you need.

Step 2: Prepare & Ship

Prepare your material samples and ship them to one of our UK laboratory. We'll guide you on quantities and preparation so your samples arrive correctly prepared and testing can begin without delay.

Step 3: Your Report

Once we've received your samples, we'll begin testing immediately. You'll receive a comprehensive, actionable report with clear recommendations your engineering, compliance, and R&D teams can act on.

Step 4 — Post-Project Support

Our after-project support team will be on hand to help you interpret results and take action, so you can correctly understand the findings, integrate them into your safety documentation, and translate them into practical next steps.

Trusted by Over +1000 Businesses

Thermal stability data you can count on

Gather data to correctly identify and mitigate process hazards without waiting months for results or having to pay tiered premiums.

Fastest UK Turnaround

Keep your process projects on track and the regulators off your back with a quote delivered to you in days. Following receipt of your sample you'll have your actionable report within 3 weeks, so you keep projects on schedule and avoid costly downtime.

Accredited QMS Data

Rest assured knowing that the data you receive is accurate, reproducible and legally defensible. Your chemical reaction hazard data (DSC & ARC) will be tested under our ISO 17025 accredited Quality Management System.

Transparent Pricing

We take the time to understand your process and will only recommend the tests you need. Tailored and effective testing proposals help you save time and reduce financial pressure.

Post-Project Support

Our support doesn't end when the test results are delivered. We provide ongoing interpretation, guidance, and application of your data, helping you integrate insights into safe, effective process decisions

Discover Our Range of Thermal Stability Tests

Our comprehensive suite of thermal stability test methods covers screening through to detailed adiabatic characterisation of your materials.

Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC)

ASTM E 537-24
ISO/IEC:17025 Accredited
Screening method used to assess the thermal stability of solids, liquids, or slurries. Quantify the temperature onset and energy of enthalpic changes in your materials.
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Accelerating Rate Calorimetry (ARC)

ASTM E 1981-22
ISO/IEC:17025 Accredited
Quantify the temperature onset and energy of potentially hazardous exothermic events and associated pressure generation. Adiabatic conditions provide accurate, scalable data for process design.
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Carius Tube

Recognised industry standard test
Useful screening tool that investigates the thermal stability of pure materials to representative samples of heterogenous reaction mixtures, correlating energetic events with important pressure data.
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Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool (ARSST)

Recognised industry standard test
Test is a pseudo-adiabatic calorimeter batch reactor tool that is used to quickly identify potential reactive chemical hazards in processes including the determination of thermal decomposition onsets.
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Air Over Layer

Screening / Isothermal “Prevention of Fires and Explosions in Dryers, John Abbott”
Set drying temperatures with confidence. Identify where productivity gains are safely available within your current process.
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Bulk Powder (Diffusion Cell)

Screening / Isothermal “Prevention of Fires and Explosions in Dryers, John Abbott”
Know the exact safe upper limit for your fluid bed dryer and optimise conditions without guesswork.
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Baskets

Screening / Isothermal (UN test N.4, BS EN 15188)
Determine the self-heating and spontaneous ignition risk of your bulk materials before storage, transport, or processing conditions create the conditions for a thermal incident.
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We'll be your guide throughout your thermal stability testing journey.

Understand, optimise, and safeguard your process.
Hydrogen Storage

Thermal Stability and Chemical Reaction Hazards Assessment – Hydrogen Storage Material

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Scale-Up

Chemical Brand Supported Through New Process R&D Scale-Up 

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Chemical Manufacturer

“Great Service all-round. Friendly and helpful contacts, and good turnaround time.”

Get in touch to find out how Sigma-HSE
can help you prevent thermal hazard incidents

Our dedicated team of experts is committed to helping ensure that your process operations will not generate fires, explosions or thermal runaway events so you can maintain a safer working environment and comply with the regulatory standards.
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Thermal stability testing solutions for every industry

Our chemical process evaluation expertise and knowledge spans multiple industries and our solutions can be applied to your specific processing operations and challenges.
Aerospace
Pharmaceuticals
Agrochemicals & Pesticides
Life Sciences
Chemical Manufacturing
Contract Manufacturers
Transportation & Logistics
Paints & Solvents
Fine Chemicals
Research & Development

Eliminate process uncertainty.

Satisfy the auditors.

Protect your brand reputation.

Sigma-HSE delivers thermal stability data and expert guidance to help you characterise your materials, control your hazards, and keep your processes safe.

Frequently asked questions

Thermal stability testing characterises how a material behaves when exposed to heat, identifying the temperature at which it begins to decompose, react, or release energy in an uncontrolled way. This data is the foundation of any safe process design involving potentially exothermic materials.

The right test depends on your material type, development stage, and the specific hazard question you need to answer. DSC and Carius Tube are effective early-stage screening tools. ARSST suits reactive mixtures at lab scale. ARC provides the detailed adiabatic data needed for storage, transport, and COMAH compliance. The right starting point is a conversation with one of our experts.

Every project includes post-project support as standard. Once your report is delivered, our team remains available to help you interpret results, integrate findings into your safety documentation, and translate recommendations into practical next steps, whether that means further testing, consultancy support, or audit preparation.

Turnaround times depend on the test method and scope of your programme. Contact us with your requirements and deadline and we will confirm feasibility and timelines as part of your bespoke quote.

Yes. Sigma-HSE works with multi-site organisations across the chemical, pharmaceutical, petrochemical, food and beverage, and oil and gas sectors. Whether you need a single screening test or a programme spanning multiple materials and locations, we will scope and deliver a solution that fits your operational and regulatory requirements.

Identify, Quantify and Mitigate the Thermal Hazards Across Your Operations

Thermal stability testing is a critical component of any process safety or product development programme involving potentially exothermic materials. Learn more about how Sigma-HSE can help you characterise your materials thermal hazards, prevent runaway reactions, and build a safer, more compliant process.
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