Identifying design criteria for implementing inherent safety in chemical process industries part 1: Design reasoning

Abstract

Recurrence of similar accidents is evidenced by past accidents, which show that accidents are not decreasing globally. It is recommended to implement the concept of inherent safety design (ISD) in the chemical process industry as a component of accident prevention strategies. This study aims to identify potential indicators of ISD for each inherent safety (IS) keyword, which will be referred to later as design reasoning (DR), based on 529 selected cases that suggest design changes that enhance the safety of processes, materials, or equipment. The cases were collected from accident cases, IS handbooks, chemical engineering journals, new product brochures, and chemical engineering magazines. The cases have to demonstrate that the new design is safer than the previous design. The design changes were evaluated to extract the corrective action and determine the common strategy employed. This information was then interpreted as DR. The collected DR were subsequently categorized and measured in terms of frequency according to IS keywords. From the statistical analysis, the highest percentage of DR is improve mixing (18%) which accounted from 95 out of 529 cases. The second is loose proximity (15.5%) and the third is fewer equipment (14.9%). For the IS keyword ranking, it can be summarized that: moderation (40%) >minimization (27%) >simplification (21%) >substitution (12%). Results showed that moderation inherent safety is a popular strategy used to implement IS. The findings serve as a valuable reference for designers or engineer attempting to implement ISD in their design task.