• In 1987, Robert M.

Solow, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, received the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on
determining the sources of economic growth.
• Solow concluded that the bulk of an economy's growth is due to
technological advances.
• It is reasonable to conclude that the growth of an industry is also
dependent on technological advances.
• This is particularly true in the chemical industry, which is entering an era
of more complex processes:
• Higher pressure
• More reactive chemicals
• Exotic chemistry
• More complex processes require more complex safety technology.
• Some industrialists believe that the development and application of
safety technology is a constraint on the growth of the chemical industry.
• As chemical process technology becomes more complex, chemical
engineers will need a more detailed and fundamental understanding of
safety.
• H. H. Fawcett stated, "To know is to survive and to ignore fundamentals
is to court disaster.“
• The course sets out the fundamentals of chemical process safety.
• Since 1950, significant technological advances have been made in
chemical process safety.
• Today, safety is equal in importance to production and has
developed into a scientific discipline with highly technical and
complex theories and practices.
• Examples of the technology of safety include:
• Hydrodynamic models representing two-phase flow through a vessel
relief
• Dispersion models representing the spread of toxic vapor through a
plant after a release
• mathematical techniques to determine the various ways that processes
can fail and the probability of failure.
• Recent advances in chemical plant safety emphasize the importance of
using appropriate technological tools.
• These tools are crucial for providing information needed to make
informed safety decisions.
• The focus is on enhancing safety in both plant design and operation.
• The term "safety" traditionally referred to accident prevention using
measures like hard hats, safety shoes, and various rules and regulations.
• The primary focus of this older approach was on worker safety.
• More recently, "safety" has been replaced by the term "loss prevention.“
• "Loss prevention" encompasses hazard identification, technical evaluation,
and the design of new engineering features to prevent loss.
• Although this text focuses on loss prevention, the terms "safety" and "loss
prevention" will be used synonymously for convenience.
• Safety or loss prevention: The prevention of accidents through the use of
appropriate technologies to identify the hazards of a chemical plant and
eliminate them before an accident occurs.
• Hazard: A chemical or physical condition that has the potential to cause
damage to people, property, or the environment.
• Risk: A measure of human injury, environmental damage, or economic loss in
terms of both the incident likelihood and the magnitude of the loss or injury.
• Chemical plants have a wide range of hazards:
• Mechanical hazards: injuries from tripping, falling, or moving equipment.
• Chemical hazards: fire, explosion, reactivity, and toxicity.
• Despite being the safest manufacturing facilities, the potential for
catastrophic accidents remains.
• Headlines about chemical plant accidents continue to appear, even with
extensive safety programs in place.
Safety Programs
• System
• Attitude
• Fundamentals
• Experience
• Time
• You
Safety Programs
• Establish a System for Safety Program:
• Record what needs to be done for an outstanding safety program.
• Ensure the tasks are completed.
• Document the completion of required tasks.
• Foster a Positive Attitude Among Participants:
• Encourage willingness to engage in thankless tasks necessary for success.
• Ensure Understanding and Application of Chemical Process Safety:
• Participants must apply the fundamentals of chemical process safety in
the design, construction, and operation of plants.
• Learn from Historical Experiences:
• Employees should read and understand case histories of past accidents.
• Seek experience and advice from others within and outside the
organization.
Safety Programs
• To be knowledgeable about safety and to practice safety. It is
important to recognize the distinction between a good and an
outstanding safety program.
• A good safety program identifies and eliminates existing safety hazards.
• An outstanding safety program has management systems that prevent the
existence of safety hazards.
Engineering Ethics
• Employment and Compensation:
• Most engineers work for private companies that provide wages and benefits
for their services.
• Company Profit Responsibility:
• Engineers contribute to maintaining and improving company profits for
shareholders.
• Safety and Loss Minimization:
• Engineers are responsible for minimizing losses and ensuring a safe and
secure environment for the company’s employees.
Engineering Ethics
• Broader Responsibilities:
• Engineers have responsibilities to:
• Themselves
• Fellow workers
• Family
• Community
• The engineering profession
• Engineering Ethics:
• Part of an engineer's responsibility is outlined in the Engineering Ethics
statement by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AICHE).
Engineering Ethics
Accident and Loss Statistics
• Accident and loss statistics:
• Important measures of the effectiveness of safety programs.
• Valuable for assessing whether a process is safe or a safety procedure is
effective.
• Statistical methods:
• Used to characterize accident and loss performance.
• Must be used with caution as they are averages and do not capture the
potential for single episodes with significant losses.
• No single method can measure all required aspects.
• Three systems considered:
• OSHA incidence rate
• Fatal accident rate (FAR)
• Fatality rate (deaths per person per year)
• Common features of the three systems:
Accident and Loss Statistics
• Report the number of accidents and/or fatalities for a fixed number of workers over a
specified period
• OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration):
• U.S. government agency responsible for ensuring a safe working environment for
workers.
• OSHA incidence rate:
• Based on cases per 100 worker years.
• Assumes one worker year equals 2,000 hours (50 work weeks/year × 40
hours/week).
• Calculated based on 200,000 hours of worker exposure to a hazard.
• Equation:
• Calculated using the number of occupational injuries and illnesses and the total employee
hours worked during the applicable period.
Accident and Loss Statistics
• An incidence rate can also be based on lost workdays instead of injuries and illnesses. For
this case

Glossary of Terms Used by OSHA and Industry to Represent Work-Related Losses

• First aid: Any one-time treatment and any follow-up visits for the purpose of obser- vation
of minor scratches, cuts, burns, splinters, and so forth that do not ordinarily require
medical care. Such one-time treatment and follow-up visits for the purpose of observation
are considered first aid even though provided by a physician or registered professional
personnel.
or
Any one-time treatment or follow-up visits for minor injuries like scratches, cuts, burns, or
splinters that usually don't need a doctor's care are considered first aid. This is true even if
a doctor or nurse provides the treatment.
Accident and Loss Statistics
Glossary of Terms Used by OSHA and Industry to Represent Work-Related Losses
• Incident rate : Number of occupational injuries and/or illnesses or lost workdays
per 100 full-time employees.
• Lost workdays: Number of days (consecutive or not) after but not including the
day of injury or illness during which the employee would have worked but could
not do so, that is, during which the employee could not perform all or any part of
his or her normal assignment during all or any part of the workday or shift
because of the occupational injury or illness.
• Occupational injury: Any injury such as a cut, sprain, or burn that results from a
work accident or from a single instantaneous exposure in the work environment.
• Medical treatment: Treatment administered by a physician or by registered
professional personnel under the standing orders of a physician. Medical
treatment does not include first aid treatment even though provided by a
physician or registered professional personnel.
Accident and Loss Statistics
Glossary of Terms Used by OSHA and Industry to Represent Work-Related Losses
• Occupational illness: Any abnormal condition or disorder, other than one
resulting from an occupational injury, caused by exposure to environmental
factors associated with employment. It includes acute and chronic illnesses or
diseases that may be caused by inhalation, absorption, ingestion, or direct
contact.
• Recordable cases: Cases involving an occupational injury or occupational illness,
including deaths.
• Recordable fatality cases: Injuries that result in death, regardless of the time
between the injury and death or the length of the illness.
• Recordable nonfatal cases without lost workdays: Cases of occupational injury
or illness that do not involve fatalities or lost workdays but do result in (1)
transfer to another job or termination of employment or (2) medical treatment
other than first aid or (3) diagnosis of occupational illness or (4) loss of
consciousness or (5) restriction of work or motion.
Accident and Loss Statistics
Glossary of Terms Used by OSHA and Industry to Represent Work-Related Losses
• Recordable lost workday cases due to restricted duty: Injuries that result in the
injured person not being able to perform their regular duties but being able to
perform duties consistent with their normal work.
• Recordable cases with days away from work: Injuries that result in the injured
person not being able to return to work on their next regular workday.
• Recordable medical cases: Injuries that require treatment that must be
administered by a physician or under the standing orders of a physician. The
injured person is able to return to work and perform his or her regular duties.
Medical injuries include cuts requiring stitches, second-degree burns (burns with
blisters), broken bones, injury requiring prescription medication, and injury with
loss of consciousness.
or
Injuries that need a doctor's treatment, like cuts needing stitches, second-degree
burns, broken bones, prescription meds, or loss of consciousness, but still allow
the person to return to regular work duties.
Accident and Loss Statistics

• The OSHA incidence rate tracks all types of work-related injuries and illnesses,
including fatalities.
• This metric offers a more comprehensive view of worker accidents compared to
systems that only focus on fatalities.
• For example, a plant might have numerous minor accidents with injuries but no
fatalities.
• However, fatality data cannot be isolated from the OSHA incidence rate without
additional details.
Accident and Loss Statistics
• The Fatal Accident Rate (FAR) is primarily used by the British chemical industry.
• This statistic is utilized because there is valuable and interesting FAR data
available in the open literature.
• The FAR measures the number of fatalities per 1,000 employees working their
entire lifetime.
• It assumes that employees work for a total of 50 years.
• The FAR calculation is based on 10⁸ working hours.
• The resulting equation provides a standardized measure of workplace fatalities
over a long-term period.
Accident and Loss Statistics
• The final method considered is the fatality rate or deaths per person per year.
• This method is independent of the actual number of hours worked.
• It reports only the number of fatalities expected per person annually.
• This approach is particularly useful for calculations involving the general
population, where the number of exposed hours is not well-defined.
• The relevant equation provides a measure of annual fatality risk per individual.
Accident and Loss Statistics
• Both the OSHA incidence rate and the Fatal Accident Rate (FAR) are dependent
on the number of exposed hours.
• An employee working a 10-hour shift is at greater total risk than one working an
8-hour shift.
• A FAR can be converted to a fatality rate (or vice versa) if the number of exposed
hours is known.
• The OSHA incidence rate cannot be easily converted to a FAR or fatality rate
because it includes both injury and fatality data.
Source:
https://aflcio.org/reports/death-job-
toll-neglect-2022
Source: A Policy
Intervention Study to
Identify High-Risk
Groups to Prevent the
Industrial
Accident in South
Korea
Example
• A process has a reported FAR of 2. If an employee works a standard 8-hr shift 300
days per year, compute the deaths per person per year.
Solution
Deaths per person per year = (8 hr/day) x (300 days/yr) x (2 deaths/108hr)
= 4.8 X 10-5
FAR analysis
• Employment: 1000 workers begin employment in the chemical industry.
• Direct Chemical Exposure: 1 out of these 1000 workers will die as a result of
direct chemical exposure.
• Total Deaths from Employment: 2 out of these 1000 workers will die as a
result of their employment throughout their working lifetime.
• Nonindustrial Accidents: 20 out of the 1000 workers will die due to nonindustrial
accidents (mostly at home or on the road).
• Disease: 370 out of the 1000 workers will die from disease.
• Smoking-related Disease: Of the 370 deaths due to disease, 40 will be a direct
result of smoking.
Example

If twice as many people used motorcycles for the same average amount of time
each, what will happen to (a) the OSHA incidence rate, (b) the FAR, (c) the fatality
rate, and (d) the total number of fatalities?
Solution:
a. The OSHA incidence rate will remain the same. The number of injuries and
deaths will double, but the total number of hours exposed will double as well.
b. The FAR will remain unchanged for the same reason as in part a.
c. The fatality rate, or deaths per person per year, will double. The fatality rate does
not depend on exposed hours.
d. The total number of fatalities will double.
Example
A friend states that more rock climbers are killed traveling by automobile than are
killed rock climbing. Is this statement supported by the accident statistics?
Solution:
The data from Table (previous slide) show that traveling by car (FAR = 57) is safer
than rock climbing (FAR = 4000). Rock climbing produces many more fatalities per
exposed hour than traveling by car. How- ever, the rock climbers probably spend
more time traveling by car than rock climbing. As a result, the statement might be
correct but more data are required.
• Chemical industry considered safe, yet concerns persist about plant safety.
• Concerns stem from potential for mass casualties (e.g., Bhopal, India disaster).
• Accident statistics often omit total deaths from single incidents, leading to
potential misinterpretation.
• Example:
• Plant A: 1 operator, explosion every 1000 years, 1 fatality.
• Plant B: 10 operators, explosion every 1000 years, 10 fatalities.
• Both plants have identical FAR and OSHA rates despite differing casualty numbers
• Individual risk remains the same across both scenarios.
Loss Data Trends (Post-1966):
• Losses reported every 10 years
• Steady increase in total losses, dollar amounts, and average loss per incident
• Total losses have doubled every decade
• Reasons for Increase:
• More chemical plants
• Larger plant sizes
• Use of more complex and hazardous chemicals
• Industry Response
• Despite safety improvements, losses continue to rise
Acceptable Risk
• Risk is inherent in every chemical process; total elimination is
impossible.
• Design stage decision:
• Determine if risks are "acceptable.“
• Compare risks to those in nonindustrial environments.
• Design effort vs. risk:
• Significant effort and cost required to achieve extremely low risks (e.g., lightning
strike level).
• Is designing for risk similar to sitting at home sufficient?
• Risk in a multi-process plant:
• Risk from multiple processes may be additive and too high.
• Engineer’s responsibility:
• Minimize risks within economic constraints.
• Never design a process that knowingly results in human loss or injury.
The manner in which workplace fatalities
occurred in 1998. The total number of
workplace fatalities was 6026. Source:
News, USDL 99-208 (Washington, DC: US
Department of Labor, Aug. 4, 1999).
Results from a public opinion survey
asking the question "Would you say
chemicals do more good than harm,
more harm than good, or about the
same amount of each?" Source:
The Detroit News.
The Nature of the Accident Process
• Risk is inherent in every chemical process; total elimination is
impossible.
• Design stage decision:
• Determine if risks are "acceptable.“
• Compare risks to those in nonindustrial environments.
• Design effort vs. risk:
• Significant effort and cost required to achieve extremely low risks (e.g., lightning
strike level).
• Is designing for risk similar to sitting at home sufficient?
• Risk in a multi-process plant:
• Risk from multiple processes may be additive and too high.
• Engineer’s responsibility:
• Minimize risks within economic constraints.
• Never design a process that knowingly results in human loss or injury.
The Nature of the Accident Process
• Chemical plant accidents follow typical patterns, helping in anticipation.
• Most common accident types:
• Fires (most frequent)
• Explosions
• Toxic releases
• Fatality risk:
• Highest in toxic releases
• Followed by explosions
• Economic losses:
• Highest in explosions, especially unconfined vapor cloud explosions (UVCEs)
• UVCEs involve large volatile vapor clouds igniting and exploding.
The Nature of the Accident Process
• Analysis of large chemical accidents:
• Vapor cloud explosions account for the largest losses (1998 dollars, worldwide).
• "Other" losses include floods and windstorms.
• Toxic release impacts:
• Minimal capital damage
• Significant personnel injuries, legal, and cleanup costs.

Types of loss for large hydrocarbon-

chemical plant accidents. Source: Large
Property Damage Losses in the
Hydrocarbon-Chemical Industries: A Thirty-
Year Review (New York: Marsh Inc.,
1998), b. 2. Used by permission of Marsh
Inc.
Causes of losses in the largest
hydrocarbon chemicalplant
accidents. Source:
Large Property Damage Losses
in the Hydrocarbon-ChemicalI
ndustries: A Thirty-Year Review
(New York: J & H Marsh &
McLennan Inc., 1998), p. 2.
Used by permission of Marsh
Inc.
Hardware associated with largest
losses. Source: A Thirty-Year
Review of One
Hundred of the Largest Property
Damage Losses in the
Hydrocarbon-Chemical Industries
(New York: Marsh Inc., 1987).
• Accident Example:
• Scenario:
• A worker in a chemical plant walks across a high walkway and stumbles.
• To prevent a fall, he grabs a nearby valve stem.
• The valve stem shears off, releasing flammable liquid.
• A cloud of flammable vapor forms and is ignited by a nearby truck.
• The resulting explosion and fire spread to nearby equipment.
• The fire lasts six days, consuming all flammable materials and completely destroying the
plant.
• Outcome:
• Economic loss of $4,161,000.
• The disaster occurred in 1969
• Three-Step Accident Sequence:
• Initiation:
• The event that starts the accident.
• Example: The worker tripped.
• Propagation:
• The event(s) that maintain or expand the accident.
• Example: Shearing of the valve, resulting in the explosion and growing fire.
• Termination:
• The event(s) that stop the accident or diminish it in size.
• Example: The fire is terminated by the consumption of all flammable materials.
• Safety Engineering Principles:
• Focus on eliminating the initiating step (though in practice, this is
challenging).
• Replace propagation steps with termination events.
• Effective accident prevention involves addressing all three areas to ensure
accidents do not propagate and are terminated as quickly as possible.
• Failure of a threaded " drain connection on a rich oil line at the base of an
absorber tower in a large (1.35 MCF/D) gas producing plant allowed the release
of rich oil and gas at 850 psi and -40 °F. The resulting vapor cloud probably ignited
from the ignition system of engine driven recompressors. The 75' high X 10'
diameter absorber tower eventually collapsed across the pipe rack and on two
exchanger trains. Breaking pipelines added more fuel to the fire. Severe flame
impingement on an 11,000-horsepower gas turbine-driven compressor, waste
heat recovery and super-heater train resulted in its near total destruction.
Identify the initiation, propagation, and termination steps for this accident.
Solution:
Initiation: Failure of threaded " drain connection
Propagation: Release of rich oil and gas, formation of vapor cloud, ignition
of vapor cloud by recompressors, collapse of absorber tower across pipe
rack
Termination: Consumption of combustible materials in process
 Inherent Safety
• Inherently Safe Plant:
• Relies on chemistry and physics to prevent accidents, rather than on control
systems, interlocks, redundancy, or special operating procedures.
• Tolerant of errors and often more cost-effective.
• Simpler, easier to operate, and more reliable due to the absence of complex
safety interlocks and elaborate procedures.
• Utilizes smaller equipment operated at less severe temperatures and
pressures, resulting in lower capital and operating costs.
Inherent Safety
• Safety Layers in Process Design:
• Safety of a process relies on multiple layers of protection.
• First layer: Process design features.
• Subsequent layers: Control systems, interlocks, safety shutdown systems,
protective systems, alarms, and emergency response plans.
• Inherent safety is integral to all layers of protection but is particularly focused
on process design features.
• The best accident prevention method is incorporating design features to
prevent hazardous situations.
• An inherently safer plant is more tolerant of operator errors and abnormal
conditions.
Inherent Safety
• Process Development and Inherent Safety:
• Inherent safety can be enhanced at any stage of a plant’s life cycle.
• Greatest potential for improvements exists during the early stages of process
development.
• Early stages offer maximum freedom for process engineers and chemists to
explore alternatives, including changes to fundamental chemistry and
technology.
• Categories of Inherently Safer Process Designs:
• Intensification (Minimize)
• Substitution (Substitute)
• Attenuation and Limitation of Effects (Moderate)
• Simplification/Error Tolerance (Simplify)
Inherent Safety
• Key Concepts:
• The predominant categories of inherent safety are intensification,
substitution, attenuation, limitation of effects, and simplification/error
tolerance.
• Some companies may adjust these categories to better suit their
understanding and application.
• The four recommended terms to describe inherent safety are:
• Minimize (Intensification)
• Substitute (Substitution)
• Moderate (Attenuation and Limitation of Effects)
• Simplify (Simplification and Error Tolerance)
Inherent
Safety
Techniques
Inherent Safety
• Minimization:
• Reduce hazards by using smaller quantities of hazardous substances in
reactors, distillation columns, storage vessels, and pipelines.
• Produce and consume hazardous materials in situ when possible to minimize
storage and transportation of hazardous raw materials and intermediates.
• Design dikes to prevent the accumulation of flammable and toxic materials
around leaking tanks.
• Use smaller tanks to reduce the hazards of a release.
• Substitution:
• Consider safer materials as alternatives or companions to minimization.
• Use alternative chemistry to allow the use of less hazardous materials or less
severe processing conditions.
• Replace toxic or flammable solvents with less hazardous ones, such as water-
based paints and adhesives or aqueous/dry flowable formulations for
agricultural chemicals.
Inherent Safety
• Moderation:
• Use hazardous materials under less hazardous conditions:
• Dilute to a lower vapor pressure to reduce release concentration.
• Refrigerate to lower vapor pressure.
• Handle larger particle size solids to minimize dust.
• Process under less severe temperature or pressure conditions.
• Use containment buildings to moderate the impact of spills of
especially toxic materials.
• Ensure worker protection with remote controls, continuous monitoring, and
restricted access.
Inherent Safety
• Simplification:
• Design simpler plants to reduce opportunities for errors and equipment
problems.
• Complexity in plants often arises from adding equipment and automation to
control hazards.
• Simplification reduces opportunities for errors and misoperation by:
• Designing piping systems to minimize leaks or failures.
• Designing transfer systems to minimize potential for leaks.
• Separating process steps and units to prevent the domino effect.
• Adding fail-safe valves.
• Placing equipment and controls in a logical order.
• Ensuring the status of the process is visible and clear at all times.
Inherent Safety
• Inherently Safe Piping System Design:
• Minimize the use of sight glasses, flexible connectors, and bellows.
• Use welded pipes for flammable and toxic chemicals; avoid using threaded
pipes.
• Use spiral wound gaskets and flexible graphite-type gaskets that are less
prone to catastrophic failures.
• Ensure proper support of lines to minimize stress and subsequent failures.