Development of a methodolology for assessing inherent environmental and safety hazards

Abstract

At early stages of chemical process plant design and development it is necessary to identify environmental and safety hazards involved in the process. This paper proposes a methodology for assessing a chemical process route to manufacture a chemical based on inherent environmental and safety hazards. The method developed in this work can be used during early design stages. It considers the potential toxicological impact on the environment and the potential chemical and process safety impacts associated within the plant. A chemical process plant at its ongoing operational condition is looked at. An index called Inherent Chemical Process Route Index (ICPRI) is proposed. The lower the ICPRI the more inherently environmentally friendly and inherently safer the route is. The methodology developed is applied on cumene oxidation process which is one of the routes to produce acetone.