An Integrated Methodology for Developing Inherently Safer and Environmentally Benign Processes

摘要

Stringent safety and environmental regulations, and cutthroat competition have challenged the chemical process industries to bring products to market at low life cycle costs without compromising on safety and environmental standards. This has led plant designers to consider inherent safety and waste minimization principles at early stages of the design process. Tools and methods are available for developing inherently safer process and carrying out waste minimization analysis individually without taking into account the close coupling between them. This results in an incomplete and inaccurate analysis. In this paper, we present a systematic methodology for the integrated safety and waste minimization analysis during process design. This is done using material-centric approach, which brings out the similarities between issues and prevention strategies related to inherent safety and waste minimization. The integrated methodology is discussed and illustrated on an industrial process involving acrylic acid production process.