USING PRINICPLES OF INHERENT SAFETY FOR DESIGN OF HYDROMETALLURGICAL SOLVENT EXTRACTION PLANTS

摘要

An Inherently Safe (IS) facility relies on the reduction or elimination of hazardous materials or processes through changes in the chemistry, physics and physical design of a process rather than by relying entirely on layers of add-on protection. The mainstream chemical processing industry (CPI) has adopted guidelines and Best Practices to better apply IS when designing or modifying facilities against fires and explosions. The mining industry has not universally embraced IS nor are there published Best Practice Guidelines that promote IS in this industry. This paper addresses IS principles in general and explores specific IS opportunities for fire protection of hydrometallurgical SX plants using the concepts of intensification, substitution, attenuation, limitation of effects and simplification/error tolerance.This paper was first given at the ALTA 2005 SX Fire Protection World Summit May 6-20, 2005 Perth, Australia and was published in the conference proceedings. It has also since been presented at the Society of Mining and Exploration (SME) Annual Meeting St. Louis Mo US April, 2006 and again at the ICHEME triennial meeting in Florence Italy April 2013. It is published under copywrite in the Chemical Engineering Transactions of the Italian Association of Chemical Engineering vol. 31, 2013.