Chemical accidents resulting from thermal runaway of chemical reactors can have severe consequences, including catastrophic damages to the public, society, property, and environment. Therefore, it is crucial to develop a methodology that can predict the safety status of reactors and eliminate the potential risk of thermal runaway timely. To this end, various thermal runaway criteria have been established to assess the safety status of reactors over the past decades. This opinion article provides a short review of classic criteria applied to distinguish between runaway and nonrunaway states of reactors. Particularly, the significance of divergence criterion in the field of thermal runaway criteria is emphasized. In addition, to illustrate the general application procedures of the divergence criterion, examples of its utilization in three research domains, including process safety assessment, process parameter optimization, and process monitoring and control, are given. In summary, the remaining challenges and future directions in the development of thermal runaway criteria, especially the divergence criterion, are discussed.

化学反应器热失控引发的化学事故可能会造成严重后果，包括对公众、社会、财产和环境造成灾难性损害。因此，开发一种能够预测反应堆安全状态并及时消除热失控潜在风险的方法至关重要。为此，过去几十年来建立了各种热失控标准来评估反应堆的安全状况。这篇评论文章对用于区分反应堆失控和非失控状态的经典标准进行了简短回顾。特别强调了发散判据在热失控判据领域的重要性。此外，为了说明发散准则的一般应用程序，给出了其在过程安全评估、过程参数优化和过程监测与控制三个研究领域的应用实例。总之，讨论了热失控准则（特别是发散准则）发展中剩余的挑战和未来方向。