Measuring Inherent Safety,HealthandEnvironmental

Characteristics Early in Process Development

Dennis C. Hendershot
Rohm and Haas Co., Engineering Division, P. 0. Box 584, Bristol, PA 19007

It is generally agreed that inherent safety is most effec- We have been attempting to provide process research
tively addressed early in chemical process development. and development engineers at Rohm and Haas with a set
Measurement of inherent safe&, health, and environ- of tools to measure inherent safety, health, and environ-
mental (SHE) characteristics of various process alterna- mental characteristicsof a process as an input to early proc-
tives is important to effectively consider these character- ess option selection. Our approach has been to separately
istics when selecting the best overallprocess. Several tools address important process safety, health, and environmen-
which can be used to measure inherent SHE character- tal characteristics. We want to identify a relatively easy set
istics of a chemical process early in development are of indices which will rank the different process options un-
briefly discussed. der consideration with respect to these characteristics. It is
then up to the process engineer to use an appTopriate de-
cision tool to combine the data and select the option that
-best meets the overall objectives. Some discussion of ap-
INTRODUCTION
propriate decision tools can be found in references [a, [ 71,
and [SI.
The literature on inherent safety emphasizes the impor- Figure 1summarizes the process safety and environmen-
tance of addressing inherent safety early in process devel- tal characteristics which we have chosen to measure:
opment [I, 2, 31. Early consideration of the tradeoffs and fire/explosion; acute toxicity; chronic toxicity; environ-
conflicts, which arise when different process options meet mental and transportation.
the many project objectives and goals to varying degrees, We have identified a relatively simple index tool which
is also essential [ 41. This discussion briefly reviews several can be used to measure each characteristic-one which can
tools which might be useful in measuring various inherent be applied early in process development with a minimum
process characteristics related to safety, health, environ- amount of detailed process information. The tool should
mental friendliness, and life cycle cost. The objective is the also be quick, to encourage use for many potential process
development of a set of tools which can be used at all options. In some cases, a set of standard “default” assump-
stages in the process life cycle, with particular emphasis on tions may be used if it is too early for specific process or
early stages of development. This paper reviews ongoing site information to be available. Several indices were con-
work in a continuing effort to evaluate potential inherent sidered as process option evaluation tools:
safety, health, and environmental (SHE) measurement tools. Fire and eqblosion-in-house index developed as
Processes generally have multiple hazards, and a proc- part of the Rohm and Haas Major Accident Preven-
ess option which is inherently safer with respect to one
hazard may be less safe with regard to a different hazard.
Things become even more complex when other process
characteristics are considered-environmental impacts,
product quality, productivity, operability, operating cost,
investment, other economic and business factors, and
others.
One approach might be to develop an overall “inherent
safety index” which would consider all of the important
process aspects related to inherent safety. Some initial work
has been done on such an index [ 51. One major issue with
such an overall inherent safety index is that it incorporates
some kind of judgement of the relative importance of the
various types of hazards and potential injuries or damage
into the index itself. The user of the index either defers to
the judgement of the developer of the index, or must mod-
ify it to incorporate his own judgement. If each user modi-
fies the index based on his own judgement, there cannot FIGURE 1 Inherent safety, health, and environmental
be a valid comparison among different users. characteristics and measurement indices.

78 Summer, 1997 Process Safety Progress (V01.16, No.2)

 tion Program (MAPP) [ 91, the Dow Fire and Explo- LITERATURE CITED
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
bridge, MA: Arthur D. Little, Inc., (1994).
This paper summarizes the efforts of a team of people at 17.Kepner, C. H., and B. B. Tregoe. i%he Netv Rational
Rohm and Haas who identified and evaluated inherent risk Manager. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Research Press
index tools: Phil Davies, Dallas Green, Leo Klawiter, Bob (1981).
Skloss, and Rick Weber. We also thank all of the Rohm and
Haas process research and design engineers who tested the This paper was presented at the CCPS International Confmnce and
proposed indices on a variety of process and plant design Workshop on Process Safe& Management and Inherently Safer PYOC-
projects. esses held in Orlando, Florida October 8-11, 19%.

Process Safety Progress (~01.16,No.2) Summer, 1997 79