Inherently intensification

The best way to deal with a hazard in a flowsheet is to remove it completely. The provision of safety systems to control the hazard is much less satisfactory. One of the principal approaches to making a process inherently safe is to limit the inventory of hazardous material, called intensification of hazardous material. The inventories we wish to avoid most of all are flashing flammable liquids or flashing toxic liquids. 

Intensification is the preferred route to inherently safer design, as the plants, being smaller, are also cheaper. 

Many of the incidents in this book were the result of leaks of hazardous materials, and the recommendations describe ways of preventing leaks by providing better equipment or procedures. As we have seen, equipment can fail or can be neglected, and procedures can lapse. The most effective methods, therefore, of preventing leaks of hazardous materials are to use so little that it hardly matters if it all leaks out (intensification or minimization) or to use a safer material instead (substitution). If we cannot do this and have to store or handle large amounts of hazardous material, we should store or handle it in the least hazardous form (attenuation or moderation). Plants in which this is done are said to be inherently safer because they are not dependent on added-on equipment or procedures that might fail the hazard is avoided rather than controlled, and the safety is inherent in the design. 

Intensification, when practicable, is the preferred route to inherently safer design, as the reduction in inventory results in a smaller and thus cheaper plant. This is, in addition to the reduction in cost, achieved by reducing the need for added-on protective equipment. 

Integration of the separation and reaction step has several advantages, but an inherent downside of such a process intensification step is the loss of degrees of freedom for process design and process control (Figure 10.9). 

Epitaxial effects are not limited to single-crystalline substrates. The possibility for substrate-induced epitaxial development in the difficult case of ZnSe (cf. conventional electrodeposition) has been established also by using strongly textured, albeit polycrystalline, zinc blende (111) CdSe electrolytic films to sustain monolithic growth of ZnSe in typical acidic selenite baths [16]. Investigation of the structural relations in this all-electrodeposited ZnSe/CdSe bilayer revealed that more than 30-fold intensification of the (111) ZnSe XRD orientation can be obtained on the textured (111) CdSe films, compared to polycrystalline metal substrates (Fig. 4.2). The inherent problems of deposition from the Se(IV) bath, i.e., formation of... 

In practice, the process regime will often be less transparent than suggested by Table 1.4. As an example, a process may neither be diffusion nor reaction-rate limited, rather some intermediate regime may prevail. In addition, solid heat transfer, entrance flow or axial dispersion effects, which were neglected in the present study, may be superposed. In the analysis presented here only the leading-order effects were taken into account. As a result, the dependence of the characteristic quantities listed in Table 1.5 on the channel diameter will be more complex. For a detailed study of such more complex scenarios, computational fluid dynamics, to be discussed in Section 2.3, offers powerful tools and methods. However, the present analysis serves the purpose to differentiate the potential inherent in decreasing the characteristic dimensions of process equipment and to identify some cornerstones to be considered when attempting process intensification via size reduction. 

In this chapter we have explained several system-inherent factors of organic fruit growing that can improve fruit quality. However, with the intensification of organic fruit production currently under way worldwide (e.g. more intensive nitrogen application on horticultural crops), there is a risk of quality decrease. Therefore, technical progress in organic farming should be closely and scientifically monitored for (side) effects on food quality, possibly in a holistic view that also includes environmental, social and human health criteria. 

Table 5 illustrates inherent safety parameters and the selection of them by Edwards and Lawrence (1993) and Heikkila et al. (1996). E.g. inventory has been chosen by both. It is relative to the capacity of a process and residence times (hold-up s) in vessels. It has a large effect on the degree of hazard and it should be kept small by intensification. 

Intensification is the preferred route to inherently safer design as the plants, being smaller, are also cheaper (Bell, Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, Institution of Chemical Engineers Symposium Series no. 34, 1971 p. 50). 

There is no doubt that the ultimate development of process intensification leads to the novel field of microreaction technology (Figure 1) (7-9). Because of the small characteristic dimensions of microreaction devices, mass and heat transfer processes can be strongly enhanced, and, consequently, initial and boundary conditions as well as residence times can be precisely adjusted for optimizing yield and selectivity. Microreaction devices are evidently superior, due to their short response time, which simplifies the control of operation. In connection with the extremely small material holdup, nearly inherently safe plant concepts can be realized. Moreover, microreaction technology offers access to advanced approaches in plant design, like the concept of numbering-up instead of scale-up and, in particular, the possibility to utilize novel process routes not accessible with macroscopic devices. 

Additional discussion and more examples of these strategies can be found in books by Kletz (6) and CCPS (4,5). The remainder of this discussion will focus on minimization (process intensification) as an inherent safety strategy. 

A single-number overall index characterizing the inherent safety of the overall process is generated by both proposed inherent safety indices. Process intensification will lower the value of the index (indicating an inherently safer process) because it will reduce the penalty for inventory. If the alternative process results in an increase in the inherent hazard due to other factors, the index will be useful in understanding the inherent safety characteristics of the different alternatives. The relative contributions of the various components of the index to the total value may also be useful in understanding process safety characteristics. Table 3 summarizes the application of this proposed inherent safety index to a number of alternative routes for the manufacture of methyl methacrylate. 

However, the integration of PIM also creates synergy in the development of intensified processes, novel product forms, and size dependent phenomena, which in turn provides novel intensified processes. Process intensification-miniaturization is seen as an important element of sustainable development because it can deliver 1) at least a 10-fold decrease in process equipment volume 2) elimination of parasitic steps and unwanted by-products, thus eliminating some downstream processing operations 3) inherent safety because of reduced reactor volume 4) novel product forms 5) energy, capital, and operating cost reduction, and an environment friendly process 6) plant mobility, responsiveness, and security and 7) a platform for other technologies. 

The synthetic processes of traditional chemical industry vill be strongly affected by new opportunities offered by biotechnology and process intensification (such as micro-reaction technology). The fiexible integration of inherently safe process technologies w ith small holding volumes w ill be a key to success for future products. 

This is also fully in line with the concept of process intensification (see below) and the strategy of minimizing the size of process equipment for a inherently safer process design. 

---