Thermal stability evaluation of β-artemether by DSC and ARC

• The thermal stability of the antimalarial drug β-artemether was studied under dynamic, isothermal and adiabatic conditions.
• The dynamic DSC measurements displayed that β-artemether experienced polymorph transformation in the melting process.
• The thermal decomposition of β-artemether is hazardous for its characteristic of autocatalytic decomposition.
• The kinetics parameters were calculated based on different models.
• SADT was predicted on the basis of ARC data.

The thermal stability of β-artemether under dynamic, isothermal and adiabatic conditions were investigated by differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) and accelerating rate calorimeter (ARC), respectively. The dynamic DSC measurements at various heating rates (1, 2, 4 and 8 °C min−1) displayed that β-artemether experienced polymorph transformation in the melting process. According to the isothermal DSC results at different temperatures 86, 88, 90 and 92 °C, β-artemether decomposed after the completion of the melting and the polymorph transformation, and the thermal decomposition of β-artemether is hazardous for its characteristic of autocatalytic decomposition. The kinetics analysis dynamically and isothermally described by Friedman method indicated the thermal decomposition of β-artemether did not comply with a single mechanism. The ARC results showed that the pressure increased with the increase of temperature, and indicated obvious linear relationship. Based on the ARC data, the value of SADT of β-artemether in 50 kg package was obtained.