Thermal runaway incidents-a serious cause of concern: An analysis of runaway incidents in China

China’s chemical industry has experienced rapid development in the past decades. However, thermal runaway incidents have sporadically occurred, posing a serious threat to the development of the industry. This study performed the statistical analysis of 271 thermal runaway incidents that occurred in China from 1984 to 2019. Incident characteristics include the number of incidents, fatalities, spatial distributions, industry types, occurrence links, and immediate causes that were revealed and analyzed. The results demonstrated that the quantities and fatalities of incidents increased overall from 1984 to 2019. Thermal runaway incidents mainly occurred in the coastal economically developed provinces. Organic and inorganic industry accounted for 57.2% and 10.7% of the total thermal runaway incidents, respectively. According to the cause of the incidents, this study found that operator error was the biggest cause of thermal runaway, accounting for 35.4%. In addition, equipment damage, improper management, and other reasons had also led to numerous of incidents and casualties. Based upon the analysis of statistical data, this paper discussed the prevention of thermal runaway incidents in four aspects: strengthen the reliability of the process, improve the professional competence of practitioners, solve the problems of small and medium-sized enterprises, and replace passive measures for active prevention.