Risk Assessment and Process Design

Based on the author's many years of experience in practicing safety assessment in industry and teaching students or professionals in this area, this book presents the methods for a systematic assessment of risks due to potential loss of control over chemical reactions and for the prevention of runaway reactions on an industrial scale. Since this topic is seldom found on university curricula and many professionals do not have the knowledge required to interpret thermal data in terms of risks, Francis Stoessel adopts a unique systematic how-to-do approach: Emphasis is on the data determination and its use for the design of safe processes. He presents the theoretical, methodological and experimental aspects of thermal risk evaluation, while reviewing the principles for mastering exothermal synthesis reactions on an industrial scale for the different common reactor types. Each chapter begins with a case history illustrating the topic and presenting the lessons learned from the incident. In this way, Stoessel analyzes a goldmine of numerous examples stemming from industrial practice, additionally providing a series of problems or case studies at the end of each chapter. Divided into three distinct sections, part one looks at the general aspects of thermal process safety, while Part 2 deals with mastering exothermal reactions. The final section discusses the avoidance of secondary, decomposition reactions, with methods given for their characterization in terms of consequences and triggering conditions, allowing the reader to determine safe process conditions.

FROM THE CONTENTS
GENERAL ASPECTS OF THERMAL PROCESS SAFETY
Introduction
Fundamentals of Thermal Process Safety
Assessment of Thermal Risks
Experimental Techniques
MASTERING EXOTHERMAL REACTIONS
General Aspects of Reactor Safety
Batch Reactors
Semi-Batch Reactors
Continuous Reactors
Technical Aspects' of Reactor Safety
Risk Reducing Measures
AVOIDING SECONDARY REACTIONS
Thermal Stability
Autocatalytic Reactions
Heat Confinement