Thesis-2005-Jameison.pdf (3.55 MB)
Inventory estimation for inherently safer design
thesis
posted on 2018-11-08, 10:16 authored by Gary JameisonTraditional approaches to safety in process plants tend to rely on 'added-on' safety measures
as a means of minimising risk. During the design process the first stage at which safety is considered
in detail is the HAZOP study. Inherent safety, where safety is designed into a plant has been found to
have great benefits with regards to both safety performance and operating costs. In order to implement
inherent safety fully it must be considered as early as possible in the design process, before decisions
have been made which are fixed and costly to change. The major barrier to this is the lack of data
available in the early design stage, which prevents different options being assessed for safety. The
most important variable is that of inventory, as the quantity of material present is a major factor in
determining the hazard posed by that material. The use of short-cut design methods together with
simplifying assumptions was investigated to determine if they could be used in an inventory estimation
study. It was found that such methods could be used. Although there are uncertainties in the available
data it would be possible to use the methods to estimate the inventory of a process at the route selection
stage of the design study. This would enable the comparison of different process routes in order to
select the route that is the safest in relation to hazardous inventories and also to pinpoint which areas of
a process have the greatest effect on safety. This would aid the design engineer to focus on the most
hazardous items in a process plant and minimise that hazard.
History
School
- Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
- Chemical Engineering
Publisher
© Gary JameisonPublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2005Notes
A Doctoral Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at Loughborough University.Language
- en