When strongly exothermic chemical processes are dealt with, safe and productive operating conditions may be difficult to identify; particularly if the reaction scheme is complex and the desired product is an intermediate. In this work, a new procedure for building boundary and temperature diagrams is developed to account for arbitrary kinetic expressions and multiple reactions. Such a procedure has been validated by comparison with literature experimental data involving autocatalytic consecutive reactions. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.