Safety in Design
We are starting a series of posts on the theme, ‘Safety in Design’. (Other terms that are used to describe this strategy are ‘Process Safety Engineering’ and ‘Inherent Safety’.)
Most discussions to do with process safety contain an implicit assumption that the facility being investigated actually exists. Therefore, it is usually taken for granted that fundamental changes to the design are not feasible. For example, a fire and explosion analysis may show that two distillation columns are too close to one another. Indeed, their current location may be in violation of a regulation or engineering standard. However, they are where they are ― it is not realistic to move one of them; the cost (both capital and lost production) would be astronomical. There may not even be enough available real estate for the move to be made.
The best time to make an energy or process facility safe is during the design phase: equipment items can be moved around at the flick of a computer mouse and case studies can be run for many design options. Each case can then be evaluated for overall risk and operability before equipment is purchased or construction starts.
