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1-15 Overview of Chemical Process Safety

Process safety includes hazard identification and evaluation, as well as risk analysis. It can be simplified to the following questions:

  1. What are the hazards?

  2. What can go wrong and how?

  3. How bad can it be?

  4. How often can it happen?

  5. What is the risk?

  6. How do we control and manage this?

Question 1 is discussed in Chapter 2, Toxicology; Chapter 3, Industrial Hygiene; Chapter 6, Fires and Explosions; Chapter 8, Chemical Reactivity; and Chapter 11, Hazards Identification. Questions 2 and 3 are discussed in Chapter 4, Source Models; Chapter 5, Toxic Release and Dispersion Models; Chapter 6, Fires and Explosions; and Chapter 12, Risk Assessment. Questions 4, 5, 6, and 7 are discussed in Chapter 12, Risk Assessment.

Chapters 7, 9, 10, and 13 focus on systems designed to prevent specific types of incidents. Chapter 7, Concepts to Prevent Fires and Explosions, discusses common fire and explosion prevention methods. Chapter 9, Introduction to Reliefs, and Chapter 10, Relief Sizing, discuss the primary method to protect process systems from the damaging effects of high pressure. Chapter 13, Safety Procedures and Designs, presents incident prevention systems in general.

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