CME 469 – Chemical

Process Safety
Fall 2019

Dr. Ioannis Zuburtikudis

Chemical Engineering Department
What is Process Safety?

Process Safety is a disciplined framework for managing the integrity of operating systems and
processes handling hazardous substances by applying good design principles, engineering, and
operating practices. It deals with the prevention and control of incidents that have the potential
to release hazardous materials or energy. Such incidents can cause toxic effects, fire, or explosion
and could ultimately result in serious injuries, property damage, lost production, and
environmental impact.

What is the Difference Between Process Safety, Chemical Process Safety, and
Chemical Safety?

Chemical Process Safety is just another name for Process Safety. Chemical Safety relates
specifically to protection against the toxic effects of chemicals that arise in normal usage.

For more on this topic go to the World Health Organization website

The three essential foundations of process safety
are as demonstrated in the below picture:
 Introduction
• How process safety it is important in the context of Chemical Engineering?

• Technological Advances in Process Safety

• Theories and Practices

• Hydrodynamic models
• Dispersion Models
• Failure and Probability Theory
• Safety Definition – old and new

• Safety or Loss Prevention

• Loss – People, Property, Process and Environment

• Safety includes hazard identification, technical evaluation, and design of

new engineering features to minimize loss.
Some Definitions
• Incident: A sudden work related accident or near miss.

• Accident: An unintended incident which results in injury to persons

and/or damage to property, the environment or a third property.

• Near miss: An unintended incident which, under different

circumstances, could have become an accident.
Definitions Contd..
• Safety or loss prevention: The prevention of accidents through the use
of appropriate technologies to identify the hazards of a chemical plant
and eliminate them before an accident occurs.
• Hazard: A chemical or physical condition that has the potential to
cause damage to people, property, or the environment.
• Risk: A measure of human injury, environmental damage, or economic
loss in terms of both the incident likelihood and the magnitude of the
loss or injury.
Safety Programs: S . A . F . E .
T. Y
Engineers and personnel should be careful while dealing with chemical
processes because they can be hazardous where they contain:
• Toxic
• Flammable
• Chemically reactive
• Explosive
• Corrosive chemicals
Accident and Loss Statistics
• What causes accidents?
• We need a suitable loss causation model that identifies the root causes of virtually all industrial accidents.
Definition - What does Accident Causation Model mean?
An accident causation model is a systematic method of ascertaining the causes of an accident. An accident is a
complex coincidence of activities or phenomena in a single time and space. Therefore, determining the causes
leading to an accident can be quite difficult, as there are so many variables to consider.
Accident causation models vary from simplistic linear models to complex non-linear models.
• Most accidents follow a three step sequence.
• Initiation
• Propagation
• Termination
There are three basic types of accident causation models:

•Simple linear models (Heinrich, 1931) - Presumes that an accident is the end result of a series
of sequential events playing out like dominos. The sequence begins with the social
environmental factor, individual factor, unsafe acts, mechanical and physical hazards, accident,
injury, etc.. It is expected that, the elimination of one of the dominos may prevent the accident

•Complex linear models - Presumes that an accident is a combination of a number of unsafe

conditions and factors where an individual interacting close to the system is at the risk of an
accident. It is expected that an accident could be prevented by setting appropriate controls.
Some varieties of this type of model are time sequence models, generic epidemiological
models, systemic models, Reason’s "Swiss Cheese" model and models of systems safety

•Complex non-linear models (Hollnagel, 2010) - Expresses that the accidents are caused by
mutually interacting variables in real time environments. Accidents could be prevented through
understanding these multiple interacting factors. Examples of such models are theoretic
accident model and process (STAMP) and functional resonance accident model (FRAM)
Safety Engineering
• Involves eliminating the initiating step and replacing the propagation
steps with termination events.
• In theory, accidents can be stopped by eliminating the initiating step
but it is unrealistic to expect elimination of all initiations.
• A much more effective approach – once initiated, do not propagate
and will terminate as quickly as possible.
The Nature of the Accident Process

Figure 1-7 Causes of losses for largest hydrocarbon-chemical plant accidents. (Data from
The
100 Largest Losses, 1972–2001.)
Figure 1-8 Hardware associated with the largest hydrocarbon-chemical plant accidents. (Data

from The 100 Largest Losses, 1972–2001.)

Facility Siting
Facility siting is the process of locating a complex, site, plant, or unit.
Facility siting is crucial because the consequences produced by an
incident are destructive; such as, explosions produce destructive
pressure waves in which these blasts cause:
 Fatalities
 Injuries
Significant property damage
One of the reasons that might increases the number of fatalities is that,
a plant can be located in a densely populated area. The consequences
to people, the environment, and the business can be catastrophic
Inherent Safety

As perfect safety cannot be achieved, common practice is to talk about inherently safer design.

“An inherently safer design is one that avoids hazards instead of controlling them, particularly by reducing
the amount of hazardous material and the number of hazardous operations in the plant.”
A process has inherent safety if it has a low level of danger even if things go wrong.
A safe plant relies on chemistry and physics to prevent accidents rather than on control systems, interlocks,
redundancy and special operating procedures to prevent accidents.
Four words recommended to describe inherent safety:
• Minimize (intensification)
• Substitute (substitution)
• Moderate (attenuation and limitation of effects)
• Simplify (simplification and error tolerance)
 Minimize

• Reduce the hazards by using smaller quantities of hazardous substances in the

process equipment.
• If possible, synthesize and consume hazardous substances in situ which
minimizes storage and transport.
• Design of dikes to minimize vapor released from spills so that flammable and
toxic material will not accumulate around leaking tanks.
• Use of smaller tanks also reduces the hazards of a release.
Substitution
• In addition to minimization, substitutions should be considered as an
alternative or companion.
• Safer materials in place of hazardous ones.
• Use of alternative chemistry
• Replacement of toxic or flammable solvents with less hazardous
solvents
Moderation
• Using hazardous material under less hazardous conditions:
• Diluting to a lower vapor pressure to reduce release conc.
• Refrigerating to the lower vapor pressure
• Handling larger particle size solids to minimize dust
• Processing under less severe T and P conditions
• Using containment buildings that ensure worker protection, remote controls,
continuous monitoring and restricted access.
Simplify
• Complexity in a plant is due to added equipment and automation to control
hazards.
• Simplification reduces the opportunities for errors and misoperation.
• Designing piping and transfer systems to minimize potential for leaks
• Process steps and units separated
• Fail-safe valves can be added
• Equipment and controls can be placed in order
• Status of the process made visible and clear at all times

Inherently safer design makes a system safer, but not necessarily safe.
Problem 1
Problem 2
Problem 3
Problem 4
Problem 5
Contents:
1.What is a Normal distribution?
2.The Standard Normal Model
3.Normal Distribution Word Problems.
4.Normal Distribution on the TI 89 Examples
5.What is a Gaussian Distribution?
6.Related Articles.
Gaussian function

It is named after the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. The graph of a Gaussian is a characteristic symmetric
"bell curve" shape. ... Gaussian functions are often used to represent the probability density function of a normally
distributed random variable with expected value μ = b and variance σ 2 = c 2.

The parameter a is the height of the curve's peak, b is the position of the center of the peak and
c (the standard deviation, sometimes called the Gaussian RMS width) controls the width of the
"bell".
What is a Normal distribution?

A normal distribution, sometimes called the bell curve, is a distribution that occurs naturally in
many situations. For example, the bell curve is seen in tests like the SAT and GRE. The bulk of
students will score the average (C), while smaller numbers of students will score a B or D. An
even smaller percentage of students score an F or an A. This creates a distribution that
resembles a bell (hence the nickname). The bell curve is symmetrical. Half of the data will fall to
the left of the mean; half will fall to the right.
The empirical rule tells you what percentage of your data falls within a certain number of
standard deviations from the mean:
• 68% of the data falls within one standard deviation of the mean.
• 95% of the data falls within two standard deviations of the mean.
• 99.7% of the data falls within three standard deviations of the mean.
The standard deviation controls the spread of the distribution. A smaller standard deviation
indicates that the data is tightly clustered around the mean; the normal distribution will be
taller. A larger standard deviation indicates that the data is spread out around the mean; the
normal distribution will be flatter and wider.
Properties of a normal distribution
•The mean, mode and median are all equal.
•The curve is symmetric at the center (i.e. around the mean, μ).
•Exactly half of the values are to the left of center and exactly half the values are
to the right.
•The total area under the curve is 1.
Standard Normal Model: Distribution of Data
One way of figuring out how data are distributed is to plot them in a graph. If the data is
evenly distributed, you may come up with a bell curve. A bell curve has a small percentage of
the points on both tails and the bigger percentage on the inner part of the curve. In the
standard normal model, about 5 percent of your data would fall into the “tails” (colored
darker orange in the image below) and 90 percent will be in between. For example, for test
scores of students, the normal distribution would show 2.5 percent of students getting very
low scores and 2.5 percent getting very high scores. The rest will be in the middle; not too high
or too low. The shape of the standard normal distribution looks like this: