An inherently safer design approach based on process safety time for batch chemical reaction processes

Abstract

The economic attractiveness of an industrial process depends a large extent on its safe and reliable operation. The inherently safer design can help reduce the potential hazard on a fundamental level and eliminate escalation at the early stage of process development. In this work, an inherently safer design method for batch chemical reactors is proposed, which maximizes the yield of target product while minimizes Dow’s fire and explosion index. Process safety time is introduced as criterion to respond to the thermal runaway risk risen by unexpected failures. Finally, two examples for specific reaction systems with given kinetics are performed to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed method. The results indicate that the product yield optimized with the proposed method is significantly higher than that obtained from literature approach involving temperature limit or divergence criterion under the same PST. With the same yield, the PST optimized with the proposed method is longer.