New simple indices for risk assessment and hazards reduction at the conceptual design stage of a chemical process

作者：Ordouei Mohammad Hossein^*; Elkamel Ali; Al Sharrah Ghanima

来源：Chemical Engineering Science, 2014, 119: 218-229.

DOI：10.1016/j.ces.2014.07.063

• Inherently safer process design
• Process simulation
• Risk reduction
• Conceptual design
• Risk indices
• Environmental Impact

Inherent safety has been of great interest to regulators, process designers and investors. The idea behind this is that a process design is more economic when it is inherently safer. Inherent safety is known as the safety intrinsic to a process; the spirit of which is to mitigate hazards within the process It is also possible to achieve inherently safer design by diminishing the hazards in multi-component streams during process design. Hazards reduction during the design phase is a challenging task. A decrease in hazards in a process design not only improves process safety, but also protects the environment from potential impacts of the process. Current methodologies for risk assessment at the conceptual design stage of a chemical process need detailed process data, which is usually unavailable at such a phase. This paper presents simple new indices that require minimum data for risk evaluation of chemical processes at the conceptual design phase. The indices are applied to a hydrogenation case study to choose inherently safer designs among different alternatives. As an important result, total capacity of a process among other design array does not suffice for decision making unless the mass fraction of hazards in product streams are appreciably low.

• 出版日期2014-11-8