Risk analysis of the sodium hypochlorite production process: Focus on the chlorine line

Abstract

Mainly in the first part of COVID-19 pandemics, sodium hypochlorite was used as disinfectant, surprisingly also to spray over people. Several hazards may be associated to the production of this compound, such as chlorine gas toxicity and explosive hazards, due to the presence of hydrogen and chlorine, and corrosive hazards. Thus, loss prevention strategies must be ad-hoc developed to mitigate the risks. In the present work, the risk assessment of the first block of the process was performed, focusing the attention on chlorine risks. To this end, HAZOP analysis was first performed to identify the most critical top event, noticing the major issues in the quality of the final product and in the release of chlorine from pipes. Then, the fault tree analysis was built to calculate its failure rate. CFD simulations were used instead of empirical model to assess with a rigorous approach the chlorine dispersion, taking into account all the boundary conditions. In particular, by setting a hazardous chlorine concentration of 180 ppm corresponding to 50% fatalities for chlorine exposition for an exposure of 60 min, results without aspiration demonstrate the possibility for the cloud to impact workers at ground level also very far from the source point, while the chlorine cloud is moved upwards with a maximum length of 6.5 m when an aspiration is used, although the air ventilation speed is kept low.