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This paper presents a systematic heuristic framework to assist process designers and engineers in assessing inherent occupational health during process development and design. Different methods for inherent occupational health assessment... more
This paper presents a systematic heuristic framework to assist process designers and engineers in assessing inherent occupational health during process development and design. Different methods for inherent occupational health assessment are available and can be selected based on the availability of the most comprehensive data at the stage of the assessment. A more detailed and accurate assessment can be performed in the process and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs) stage via the Occupational Health Index method (OHI) due to the availability of more precise data on the process (i.e., detailed piping, instruments and equipment). In the event of P&ID is not available, Health Quotient Index (HQI) method can be adopted to assess chronic inhalative health risk due to fugitive emission from process components (e.g., valve, flange, etc.) in the stage where process flow sheet diagrams (PFDs) are already generated. A qualitative health assessment can be conducted using the Inherent Occupation...
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Power and heat are the primary energies for the industry and communities. Combined heat and power (CHP) is a process of heat and power cogeneration, which is designed to meet the needs of both users. In previous studies of emergy analysis... more
Power and heat are the primary energies for the industry and communities. Combined heat and power (CHP) is a process of heat and power cogeneration, which is designed to meet the needs of both users. In previous studies of emergy analysis on CHP, the transformity was simply calculated by dividing the total emergy input by the amount of production. The result always showed that transformity of electricity is lower than the transformity of steam, which is not logical since electricity is thermodynamically higher value energy than heat. Neither can it illustrate that the co-production process is more efficient than an independent one because The efficiency of co-production is calculated by considering the available energy of the two products together and comparing it with the available energy of the electricity only in another plant. According to emergy analysis rules, the emergy is thought to be the energy history that cannot be separated for inseparable co-production. However, if the...
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Industrial design or R&D project can be understood as series of decisions. A method for project administration, based on a detailed decision analysis, is presented. In addition to conventional project management, the approach helps to... more
Industrial design or R&D project can be understood as series of decisions. A method for project administration, based on a detailed decision analysis, is presented. In addition to conventional project management, the approach helps to take into account unique features of a project and to improve the methodological performance.
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An index based method for estimating the effect of process configuration on inherent safety has been presented. Process configuration means which operations are involved in the process and how they are connected together. An inherently... more
An index based method for estimating the effect of process configuration on inherent safety has been presented. Process configuration means which operations are involved in the process and how they are connected together. An inherently safe process structure is not possible to define by explicit rules, but one has to rely on standards, recommendations and accident reports. When problem solving is based on experience it is possible to use case-based reasoning. Therefore CBR was employed for determining the value of safe process structure subindex. For this purpose a casebase of accident cases and recommended designs was created. A case can be retrieved on five levels of aggregation (from process to detail) from the casebase to ensure the relevancy of retrieved information in various phases of preliminary process design.
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Despite major concern of industries on profitability, there has been growing awareness on the importance of considering environmentally conscious design of new processes. Consideration of environmental, health and safety aspects in the... more
Despite major concern of industries on profitability, there has been growing awareness on the importance of considering environmentally conscious design of new processes. Consideration of environmental, health and safety aspects in the initial stages of chemical process design will not only lead to safer and environmentally benign plants, but overall cost reduction. The interest of this paper is on methods that consider environmental impacts as part of chemical process hazards. Eight methods are reviewed for their goal and scope, developer and considered aspects. The methods differ significantly in the considered aspects and parameters, which consequently influencing the way data is processed. The applicability of the methods with the environmental friendliness definition from chemical process stand point is also explained. The paper provides a reference for the comparison of the existing environmental assessment methods targeting various stages of chemical process design. The review finds that despite all the advantages of each of the methods, none is able to address all the environmental aspects of a process. Also none provides assessment approach for different plant stages. Therefore, further improvement of the assessment methods is needed.
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Recent analyses on major accidents in the USA, Europe and Asia show that the accident rate in the chemical process industry is not decreasing. Earlier study shows that similar causes of accidents are being estimated to recur within a... more
Recent analyses on major accidents in the USA, Europe and Asia show that the accident rate in the chemical process industry is not decreasing. Earlier study shows that similar causes of accidents are being estimated to recur within a five-year interval. This scenario shows that the CPI is very slow in learning from accidents. This paper discusses the current issues of loss prevention in the CPI and identifies the basic reasons why major accidents kept on happening.
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Increasing environmental pressure and efforts to make pulp production processes more economical and efficient are driving pulp producers to adopt the best available technologies (BAT). As technology moves towards totally integrated mill... more
Increasing environmental pressure and efforts to make pulp production processes more economical and efficient are driving pulp producers to adopt the best available technologies (BAT). As technology moves towards totally integrated mill concepts, engineers are looking at the possibilities of integrating the kraft process to achieve an ecologically balanced pulp mill, which aims at balancing production and consumption of chemicals by onsite integration. The modern kraft mill can be very environmentally benign by using the process integration and best available technologies discussed in this paper. The process alternatives presented are based on the literature on modern pulp mills and the studies done by the authors. The concepts presented are mature techniques, which can be used for optimizing the chemical balance and overall transportations and thereby improving the economy and at the same time reducing emissions by waste utilization.
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Evaluation and optimization of biofuel manufacturing routes is an attractive but complicated task due to the large number of raw material and process alternatives. Multilevel modeling tool for the evaluation of liquid biofuel processing... more
Evaluation and optimization of biofuel manufacturing routes is an attractive but complicated task due to the large number of raw material and process alternatives. Multilevel modeling tool for the evaluation of liquid biofuel processing route and raw material selection is presented. The efficiency criteria used are material, heat and hydrogen conversion efficiencies. The principle of the evaluation tool is described and demonstrated.
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A method of reusing existing design cases for synthesis of distillation process sequences is presented. The approach uses case-based reasoning (CBR) that finds the most similar existing separation designs and applies the knowledge of... more
A method of reusing existing design cases for synthesis of distillation process sequences is presented. The approach uses case-based reasoning (CBR) that finds the most similar existing separation designs and applies the knowledge of their concept for solving new problems. The method has previously been developed for selection of single separations and simple sequences but has now been extended to cover synthesis of more complicated sequences. The method is intended for finding feasible process alternatives in preliminary process design. INTRODUCTION The paper presents a method for finding feasible separation process sequences by using case-based reasoning (CBR). CBR is a method of reusing existing design cases for making new designs. This means finding most alike existing processes and applying the knowledge of their separation capacity and design for solving new design problems. This is especially important in the early phases of process design when many alternatives should be qui...
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ABSTRACT Enhanced biofuel production routes utilizing separate lignin and carbohydrate processing of lignocellulose are analyzed and compared with two conventional routes; the methanol and methane production via syngas from biomass. The... more
ABSTRACT Enhanced biofuel production routes utilizing separate lignin and carbohydrate processing of lignocellulose are analyzed and compared with two conventional routes; the methanol and methane production via syngas from biomass. The enhanced processes studied are: hydrocarbons production by hydrogenation of biomass based sugars by hydrogen obtained from lignin gasification, and ethanol production by biomass hydrolysis and fermentation and conversion of residual lignin into methanol via syngas. The analysis of processes was done by rigorous flowsheet modeling including power production calculations and realistic heat integration and evaluation based on energy yield, greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction and net present value (NPV). The enhanced processes via separate lignin and sugar processing can run in two modes: either being energy self-sufficient or utilizing external low temperature heat and power. The processes can operate with high efficiency as ‘waste heat and power to gas and liquids’ processes for producing liquid or gaseous fuels especially when excess energy is available e.g. in summer. Of all the processes studied the enhanced hydrocarbon production process integrated with external low temperature heat source gave the largest GHG reduction and highest NPV. External low temperature heat and electricity is converted into fuels in 136% higher heating value (116% lower heating value) efficiency.
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Major accident kept on happening in the chemical process industry (CPI) may due to poor learning causing similar accident recur. It is been claimed that the weakest link of learning from accident is related to poor dissemination of... more
Major accident kept on happening in the chemical process industry (CPI) may due to poor learning causing similar accident recur. It is been claimed that the weakest link of learning from accident is related to poor dissemination of accident information. In this paper, the dissemination parts of learning cycle were improved. A conceptual approach of direct dissemination of accident knowledge into design process is proposed. In the accident information dissemination, the accident knowledge was transformed into statistical data and/or accident ranking which is a major part of hazard identification and risk assessment method/tool. Depending on the type of accident data used, the accident-based method or problem-solving method could be developed through this concept. The concept was successfully applied into chemical plant design and several systematic methods for hazard identification and safer process design life cycle have been published.