201. Chemical reaction hazard identification and evaluation: Taking the first steps
- Author
-
David J. Leggett
- Subjects
Toxicology ,Test strategy ,Identification (information) ,Safe operation ,Risk analysis (engineering) ,Scope (project management) ,Process (engineering) ,Computer science ,General Chemical Engineering ,Hazard analysis ,Safety, Risk, Reliability and Quality ,Hazard ,Chemical hazard - Abstract
The circumstances leading to reactive chemicals accidents are often complex, but most of them could have been foreseen by the use of laboratory tests, hazard analysis and chemical reaction engineering techniques. A hazard evaluation and testing strategy that accomplishes these goals will be comprehensive and probably require significant investment of resources. It typically has the following key steps: • Initial hazards review of the process chemistry and unit operations • Identification of potential hazard scenarios • Assessment of the nature and extent of hazard scenarios • Development of prevention strategies • Development of protection strategies • Implementation of prevention and protection measures. Once a hazard has been identified and assessed as a credible threat to safe operation, most companies will take measures to mitigate the hazard. However, for small and mid-sized companies, the initial hazard identification and reactive chemicals assessment continues to be troublesome. This paper presents some specific tools to aid in completing these important first steps. They are straightforward to use and provide the information needed to enable a company to reliably determine and justify the need for further reactive chemical hazard testing. Introduction This paper advances the proposition that an initial chemical reactivity hazards assessment exists that can be performed by small/medium sized chemical manufacturing companies. Given the limited resources of most small and medium sized companies the scope of a chemical reactivity hazards assessment will be limited. The following limitations are proposed as reasonable for an initial review of the new or changed process: • First round assessment takes ≤1 day to complete • Initially no process hazards testing is done • Assessment can be done by trained chemical engineer • Most hazards, but not all, will be identified by the assessment • Conduct hazards testing if need demonstrated by initial assessment No hazard assessment procedure will catch 100% of all hazards present in a process. The intention of this approach is to identify the maximum number of serious potential hazards
- Published
- 2004
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