Handling chemicals

This chapter considers the nature and mitigation of the hazards associated with the movement and handling of materials. Later chapters will deal with specific equipment and plant procedures. 

the chapter considers standard methods for classifying material hazards (2.1). Since safe handing requires knowledge of associated hazards (e.g., static electricity), these are dealt with next (2.2). The discussion then turns to the specifics of handling materials, in the sequence liquids (2.4), solids (2.5), gases (2.6), and wastes (2.7). 

In this discussion, the term material refers to both chemical and nonchemical substances. Chemicals are those substances with readily definable compositions, such as calcium chloride, sulfuric add, vinyl acetate, and methyl isocyanate. Nonchemicals are those substances whose chemical structures are not readily defined, such as wood, hydraulic oils, cereal grains and ceramics. 

The safe handling of a given material in any situation requires consideration of two factors  

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Reactive chemical hazards may arise from the inherent properties of the chemicals handled, used or disposed of and/or from their admixture or processing. 

Identify up to 10 chemicals handled at your facility and obtain information on their flammability limits. 

This volume has been prepared as a reference source on the hazardous properties of industrial and consumer chemicals. It is designed to assist chemical handling specialists, emergency responders, and health and safety engineers and technicians in the safe handling and shipping practices of chemicals. 

Explain the terms angle of repose, angle of internal friction, and angle of slide. Why are these important to dry bulk chemical handling ... 

Table 7-18(d) i Impeller for chemical handling pump resulting in PPS ... 

Chemical spills in the laboratory may be hazardous, damaging to flooring and furniture finishes, or simply messy to clean up. Laboratory equipment houses and distributors of safety equipment carry a variety of clean-up kits made for specific types of spills, depending on the types of chemicals handled. Generally, the kits contain absorbents or neutralizers, or a combination of the two, plus instructions for use. Kits should be stored as close as possible to where spills are likely to occur and not in a remote storeroom. Instructions must be kept with the kits, not in a file cabinet. Quick action in case of a spill is important in reducing both hazards and damage. 

Different types of flooring may be used in different parts of a laboratory. In a large university chemistry building, one material was used for the organic laboratories and another for the inorganic because of the different chemicals handled. 

Increased profits Reduced chemical handling problems... 

Strong legal provisions and standard procedures in chemical industry and chemical handling must be in force. 

Reactive Chemistry Reviews The process chemistry is reviewed for evidence of exotherms, shock sensitivity, and other instability, with emphasis on possible exothermic reactions. The purpose of this review is to prevent unexpected and uncontrolled chemical reactions. Reviewers should be knowledgeable people in the field of reactive chemicals and include people from loss prevention, manufacturing, and research. The CCPS Essential Practices for Managing Chemical Reactivity Hazards provides a useful protocol for identifying chemical reactivity hazards (Johnson et ah, 2003). A series of questions about the chemical handling operations and the materials are used to determine if there are possible reactivity hazards. Figure 23-18 summarizes the CCPS protocol for identifying reaction hazards. 

Introduction The inherent nature of most chemicals handled in the chemical process industries is that they each have physical, chemical, and toxicological hazards to a greater or lesser degree. This requires that these hazards be contained and controlled throughout the entire life cycle of the facility, to avoid loss, injury and environmental damage. The provisions that will be necessary to contain and control the hazards will vary significantly depending on the chemicals and process conditions required. 

Company A is a major pharmaceutical manufacturer with worldwide operations. The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) staff visited a site with both pilot-plant facilities and pharmaceutical manufacturing operations. The company is continually developing new and innovative chemistry, which results in frequent changes in the chemicals handled and manufacturing techniques used. 

Company C is a small custom chemical manufacturer. Contract manufacturing accounts for its entire business. CSB staff visited a small manufacturing site with several batch chemical manufacturing operations. The nature of custom chemical manufacturing translates into very frequent changes in chemicals handled and processed. 

Company D is a large pharmaceutical manufacturer with worldwide operations. CSB staff visited a pilot-plant facility and thermal hazards laboratory. Pilot-plant operations included the use of several batch chemical reactors. Like Company A, this company also frequently changes chemicals handled and manufacturing techniques. 

A hazard evaluation is performed before assessing the technical feasibility of a new process. Chemical handling/storage criteria, critical process conditions, quality measurements, thermal hazards, and post-campaign cleanup are considered in the introduction of any new process/product. 

An alternative efficient approach to disperse CNTs relies on the use of synthetic peptides. Peptides were designed to coat and solubilise the CNTs by exploiting a noncovalent interaction between the hydrophobic face of amphiphilic helical peptides and the graphitic surface of CNTs (Dieckmann et al., 2003 Zoibas et al., 2004 Dalton et al., 2004 Arnold et al., 2005). Peptides showed also selective affinity for CNTs and therefore may provide them with specifically labelled chemical handles (Wang et al., 2003). Other biomolecules, such as Gum Arabic (GA) (Bandyopadhyaya et al., 2002), salmon sperm DNA, chondroitin sulphate sodium salt and chitosan (Zhang et al., 2004 Moulton et al., 2005), were selected as surfactants to disperse CNTs (Scheme 2.1). 

Another unnatural amino acid (28), the (3-diketone, has also been genetically incorporated and used in vitro to label proteins with hydroxylamine derivatives of biotin or fluorescent dyes, thereby increasing the number of unique chemical handles that can be genetically incorporated into proteins in vivo. 

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