Making EHS an Integral Part of Process Design

摘要

It is no longer sufficient to design a cost-effective process using traditional process economic considerations of capital cost along with raw material, energy, and labor usage. To address regulatory requirements of environmental, health, and safety (EHS) issues businesses have traditionally reviewed process designs where each of the various EHS issues is handled separately. The proposed changes that result from these reviews often create additional costs over the life of a process, and cause rework in designs and installed facilities, creating little perceived value. On the other hand experienced process/project professionals feel that there is commonly a 15-35% life cycle cost reduction available when EHS issues are addressed in a concurrent and timely manner. Improvements of 50% or more in project costs have been attained in some cases. This paper presents an overview of an approach termed MERITT (Maximizing EHS Returns by Integrating Tools and Talents) for enhancing process development through better integration of environmental, health, and safety evaluations. It draws on critical components of inherent safety, pollution prevention, green chemistry, and related paradigms through selective adoption and adaptation of their existing tools, skills, and knowledge resources. As an optimization approach, MERITT is founded on three key concepts: 1. driving evaluations up-front, to the earliest stage in the process 2. creating a continuum of thinking which links successive stages and evaluations 3. promoting expanded information and knowledge exchange.