SUMMARYFeatures used to characterize acoustic emission signals from chemical systems are evaluated with regard to their potential for pattern recognition. Eight chemical systems involving phase transitions, hydration, dissolution and effervescence are employed and treated as separate signal classes. These are compared pairwise and the discriminatory capabilities of about 50 features are investigated by computing Fisher weights. Time domain and frequency domain descriptors are examined. Correlations among the features evaluated are also reported. Recommended descriptors are the mean and median frequencies, frequency bandwidth, number of level crossings (0% and 25%), crest factor (time and frequency domains), halfIife, kurtosis and normalized percentiles of the signal and its power spectrum. The effectiveness of the recommended descriptors is demonstrated through the separation of signal classes in two different systems (melting ice and an enzyme-catalyzed gas formation reaction) by principal components analysis.