Safe Design and Operation of Plants

From the preceding chapters it became clear that hazards can be associated with the handling and conversion of materials in process plants. This is true as well for the erection and the demolition after the end of the industrial activity, hence for the entire life cycle. In what follows, however, the focus is on the design and operation 

A hazard or a hazard potential is the possibility of suffering harm. The term danger implies that the hazard or hazard potential becomes more concrete and harm has to be expected. Risk is understood to be the combination of the probability (better expected frequency, vid. Chap. 8) of a damage to occur and of its extent We speak of safety if a risk has a tolerable level [1]. 

The supreme principle of plant and process safety is to devise processes and plants such that they do not cause considerable dangers for man, environment and valuable assets [2]. This is to be achieved by a design based on the state of technology, respectively of safety technology, which is represented by numerous statutory regulations, standards, ndes and guidelines (cf. [3]). These refer to both the components of technical plants and to the plants themselves [4, 5]. 

The safe design of components is one of the prerequisites for a safe plant. It is the task of experts of the area in question. For example, explosion proof motors are designed and built by electrical engineers. The great variety of technical components and their safe design, which is component-specific, are not discussed here. The concern rather is the safe design of plants and processes. This refers to the following areas [6]  

Safety has to be considered in parallel and interacting with the planning, design, erection and operation of a plant. The procedure is presented below based on [6]. 

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Designing and Operating Safe Chemical Reaction Processes Safe design and operation of plants and processes for chemical reactions HSE... 

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