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Journal ArticleDOI

A simple graphical method for measuring inherent safety

14 Nov 2003-Journal of Hazardous Materials (Elsevier)-Vol. 104, pp 15-30
TL;DR: The proposed ISD measurement procedure has a major advantage of expanding consideration in future to incorporate economic, regulatory, pollution control and worker health aspects, as well as factors such as the experience one has or 'the comfort level' one feels with each of the processes under consideration.
About: This article is published in Journal of Hazardous Materials.The article was published on 2003-11-14. It has received 102 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Inherent safety & Process safety.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors reviewed past progress in the development of methods and models for process safety and risk management and highlighted the present research trends; also it outlines the opinions of the authors regarding the future research direction in the field.

361 citations


Cites methods from "A simple graphical method for measu..."

  • ...Gupta and Edwards (2003) proposed a simple graphical method to choose the best process route based...

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  • ...Gupta and Edwards (2003) proposed a simple graphical method to choose the best process route based on the ISD principle....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: An Inherent Occupational Health Index has been developed for assessing the health risks of process routes during process research and development stage and it is demonstrated by comparing the inherent occupational healthiness of six methyl methacrylate process routes using three different types of index calculations.
Abstract: Occupational health studies the interaction of work and health, especially the long-term effect of chemicals to health. In this paper an Inherent Occupational Health Index has been developed for assessing the health risks of process routes during process research and development stage. The method takes into account both the hazard from the chemicals present and the potential for the exposure of workers to the chemicals. The index can be used either for determining the level of inherent occupational health hazards or comparing alternative process routes for these risks. The method is tailored for the process research and development stage by including only such properties of chemicals and operating conditions of process, which are available already in this early stage. In the end of this paper the approach is demonstrated by comparing the inherent occupational healthiness of six methyl methacrylate process routes using three different types of index calculations; additive-type, average-type, and worst case-type. The study discloses that the average- and worst case-based approaches analyze the characteristics of a route better than the additive calculation, which is greatly affected by the number of steps in the route. A quantitative standard scale for the index is also developed to allow health level assessment of a single process.

128 citations


Cites background from "A simple graphical method for measu..."

  • ...Therefore because of this scope selection the ACH process was always regarded as the least safe or healthy alternative as pointed out by Gupta & Edwards (2003)....

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  • ...Gupta & Edwards (2003) point out that, due to the additive nature of the indexes, the processes with more steps tend to get the worst index values....

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  • ...Gupta & Edwards (2003) discuss this aspect from inherent safety point of view....

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  • ...…fair since in the other five MMA routes, only the subprocesses for actual MMA production are assessed – not the raw material production or waste treatment even though the other processes also produce waste materials such as residues and wastewater but in much smaller extent (Gupta & Edwards, 2003)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Process Route Healthiness Index (PRHI) has been developed to quantify the health hazards that might arise from chemical processes; the higher the index, thehigher the hazards.

106 citations


Cites background or methods from "A simple graphical method for measu..."

  • ...Among others (besides those mentioned previously) are by Khan and Abbasi (1998a) (RRABD), Khan et al. (2001) (SweHI), Mansfield (1997) (INSET), Palaniappan et al. (2002a, b) (iSafe) and Gupta and Edwards (2003) (Graphical Method)....

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  • ...(2002a, b) (iSafe) and Gupta and Edwards (2003) (Graphical Method). Occupational health aspect, on the other hand, has received limited attention as compared to process hazards. Nevertheless, there are still quite a number of existing methods addressing this area. The examples of these methods include; by Koller et al. (1999, 2000) (EHS), Shah et al. (2003, 2005) (SREST), Khan and Abbasi (1998b) (HIRA) and by Sheng and Hertwich (1998) (HHS). However, all of the above-mentioned methods attend to health aspect only as part of the other main aspects. For instance, in EHS and SREST methods, they addressed health issue alongside safety and environmental issues. Meanwhile, HIRA considered only a small part of health aspect (as HIRA main objective is to assess safety problems) and HHS evaluated health hazards as part of the environmental assessment activity. Available researches particularly addressing occupational health aspect were carried out by Johnson (2001) (OHHI) and Hellweg et al. (2005). Hellweg’s work concentrated on adapting occupational health effects in the existing lifecycle assessment (LCA) method....

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  • ...(2002a, b) (iSafe) and Gupta and Edwards (2003) (Graphical Method). Occupational health aspect, on the other hand, has received limited attention as compared to process hazards. Nevertheless, there are still quite a number of existing methods addressing this area. The examples of these methods include; by Koller et al. (1999, 2000) (EHS), Shah et al. (2003, 2005) (SREST), Khan and Abbasi (1998b) (HIRA) and by Sheng and Hertwich (1998) (HHS). However, all of the above-mentioned methods attend to health aspect only as part of the other main aspects. For instance, in EHS and SREST methods, they addressed health issue alongside safety and environmental issues. Meanwhile, HIRA considered only a small part of health aspect (as HIRA main objective is to assess safety problems) and HHS evaluated health hazards as part of the environmental assessment activity. Available researches particularly addressing occupational health aspect were carried out by Johnson (2001) (OHHI) and Hellweg et al....

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  • ...(2002a, b) (iSafe) and Gupta and Edwards (2003) (Graphical Method)....

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  • ...(2002a, b) (iSafe) and Gupta and Edwards (2003) (Graphical Method). Occupational health aspect, on the other hand, has received limited attention as compared to process hazards. Nevertheless, there are still quite a number of existing methods addressing this area. The examples of these methods include; by Koller et al. (1999, 2000) (EHS), Shah et al. (2003, 2005) (SREST), Khan and Abbasi (1998b) (HIRA) and by Sheng and Hertwich (1998) (HHS)....

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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a new index known as process route index (PRI) is proposed for inherent safety quantification to address the highlighted issues, which is developed with the function of temperature and pressure for the quantification of the explosiveness level.
Abstract: The fundamental concept of quantification of inherent safety level is based on the ranking of chemical process routes. Three pioneering inherent safety indices (i.e. PIIS, ISI and i-Safe) are based on this concept and have treated the chemicals in the process system as individual components and not as mixture. These indices lack of ability to reflect the contribution of individual components in the mixture which may affect the quantification of the inherent safety level for process route selection. A new index known as process route index (PRI) is proposed for inherent safety quantification to address the highlighted issues. Level of explosiveness is used for quantification of the inherent safety level for process route selection to illustrate the importance of the individual contribution of the components in the mixture. PRI is developed based on fundamental process parameters that influence the explosion of chemical processes. One of the important criteria for the quantification of the level of explosiveness is to determine the combustibility of the chemicals based on the difference between lower flammability limit (LFL) and upper flammability limit (UFL). The current available indices do not consider the influence of process temperature and pressure on the UFL and LFL. The PRI is developed with the function of temperature and pressure for the quantification of the explosiveness level. The PRI is benchmarked against the published results of the other indices using HYSYS simulation case studies to produce methyl methacrylate acid (MMA) by various process routes. Benchmarking results conclude that PRI is in close agreement with other inherent safety indices and also able to make differentiation between inherent safety level of process routes which were previously indistinguishable.

104 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The Inherent Benign-ness Indicator (IBI) is proposed, a statistical analysis-based methodology for comparing process routes that can determine the broad similarities and differences in the safety, health, and environmental footprints of the routes.

102 citations

References
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Dissertation
01 Jan 1996
TL;DR: Developing a method for quantifying the inherent safety of chemical routes has proved to be a large and difficult task and further research is needed to decide how the interactions between parameters affect the assessment of inherent safety.
Abstract: Inherent safety is that which is intrinsic to a chemical plant. Chemical plants should be designed to be acceptably safe and it is better if this can be achieved through inherent safety, which can not be compromised, rather than engineered safety. The earlier that inherent safety is considered, the greater are the benefits. The choice of chemical route, that is the raw materials and the sequence of reactions that converts them to the desired products, is a key early design decision that influences the inherent safety of a plant. The inherent safety must be quantified in order to choose the optimum route from a number of alternatives. A trial inherent safety index has been developed for ranking alternative chemical routes by inherent safety. The physical properties of the chemicals involved, and the conditions in the reaction steps are parameters in the index calculation procedure. The index has been tested on a number of routes to methyl methacrylate (MMA). In order to verify and improve the index, a panel of experts was asked to rank the routes, and to make comments about the index and how it could be improved. This expert judgement exercise used three questionnaires and a group meeting to elicit the required information. Statistical methods were used to analyse the results from the questionnaires. The experts agreed closely among themselves on the rankings. The rankings from the trial index and the rankings from the experts matched closely. A new index was produced based on the comments of the experts and further research. The new index is more structured than the trial index, and separation and storage steps are included in addition to reaction steps. The inherent safety of the routes to MMA has been assessed with the new index. Developing a method for quantifying the inherent safety of chemical routes has proved to be a large and difficult task. Further research is needed to decide how the interactions between parameters affect the assessment of inherent safety. The ultimate goal is a computerised tool that could be used in the early stages of industrial process development.

55 citations