Overview of Safety and Health Assessment for Biofuel Production Technologies

Overview of Safety and Health Assessment for Biofuel Production Technologies 

Process Design Strategies for Biomass Conversion Systems, First Edition. Edited by Denny K. S. Ng, Raymond R. Tan, Dominic C. Y. Eoo, and Mahmoud M. El-Halwagi. 2016 John Wiley Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley Sons, Ltd. 

A generally accepted division of sustainability is to divide it into economic, environmental, and social sustainability. From a company s point of view, corporate responsibility is the term used to cover these aspects. Safety and health are important parts of corporate responsibility which is integral for social sustainability. Therefore, workers safety and health are among the sustainability indicators used (Al-Sharrah et al., 2010). 

Various methods have been introduced to enhance process safety and health performances in the process indnstry. However, most of them were focnsing on evaluating safety and health performance aspects in a proposed process design rather than incorporating those aspects when designing the process. Undonbtedly, hazard and risk assessment is an important element of safety and health management systan—bnt the benefits will be greatest if 

Workers do not create hazards if the working guidelines are properly in place and strictly followed. In many cases, the hazards are built into the workplace (Kletz, 1991). It has been identified that most accidents involved design elements (Kidam, 2012). It is therefore important to make work safer by designing an inherently safer workplace rather than trying to get workers to adapt to unsafe conditions. 

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