OVERVIEW

Overview

A key accomplishment of a reputed chemical plant is to have long duration of accident free operation. Recently, a number of accidents occurred in major r&d establishments, pilot plants as well as in production plants, in spite of the good safety protocols being practiced. Thorough knowledge of the fundamentals of safety technology is essential to avoid such unwanted accidents.

A number of serious accidents have occurred in production facilities which involves handling and processing of chemicals, These accidents causes not only serious injuries of operators it may even cause death. It also results in huge loss of properties and may even lead to major fire accidents of the locality.

Thermal runaway reactions are the primary cause of the accidents. Therefore efficient thermal screening system for chemicals and chemical processing is a prerequisite to for reducing accidents in the chemical plants.

The implementation of effective chemical process safety measures prevents incidents and accidents at pilot or manufacturing scale. Chemical processes have become more numerous, plants more complex, chemistry more ambitious and more toxic, and operating conditions more dangerous over a period time. For these reasons, and owing to the occurrence of serious accidents, regulatory bodies and society at large have become more safety-conscious. These trends have forced companies to improve general chemical process safety and develop concepts that ensure inherently safe chemical processes and manufacturing. An inherently safe design prevents chemical hazards rather than controlling them.

It is very important to understand the process and risk involved to ensure safe and compliant operation. Thorough chemical process safety studies prevent runaway reactions and thereby preventing the damage and destruction of assets; injury or loss of life, and/or environmental degradation or pollution.
The purpose of such studies is to gain an overview of all potential dangers, effects, and consequences. It includes disciplines such as product and process, personal, and environmental safety. Appropriate attention, management, and investigation must be given to each of the above disciplines to ensure the safe manufacturing of chemicals at large scale.

Importance of chemical process safety studies:

Chemical process safety focuses on preventing incidents and accidents during large scale manufacturing of chemicals and pharmaceuticals. It prevents the unintentional release of potentially dangerous materials and energy to the environment during a chemical reaction, or because of a runaway reaction.

Process safety incidents in a chemical plant are mainly due to a) missing information, b) insufficient operator training, c) technical defects, d) human errors and e) combination of unfortunate coincidences Malfunctions, human errors, and lack of full understanding of the chemistry, including all possible side-reactions, of the process and its parameters are among the most frequent reasons for which incidents or accidents take place.

Identifying and understanding hazards and risks, along with thorough risk analysis, enable evaluation of the risk of triggering decompositions and prevent loss of control over the reaction. Chemical process safety is part of a comprehensive safety assessment for scale-up and manufacturing and must therefore be regarded as part of company culture and policy.

Chemical process safety uses a framework of different techniques, technologies, and models and requires an understanding of the desired and potentially undesirable reactions possible during the process. This includes the investigation of thermal events, heat transfer, mixing, mass transfer, and gas evolution, as well as stability of the starting material, the reaction mass, and the resulting products.