73361 - Industrial Safety

Learning outcomes

After the course students will be able to assess the risks due to industrial installations (i.e. chemical and process industries), through the application of basic concepts about: classification of hazardous substances, hazard identification, probabilistic assessment of top events and consequence assessment.

Course contents

Requirements/Prior knowledge

Physical and chemical properties of pure substances and mixtures, thermodynamics and phase equilibrium.

Fundamentals of fluid mechanics, basic knowledge of main unit operations of the process industry and understanding of their basic control and safety systems through the reading of P&ID

Fluent spoken and written English is a necessary pre-requisite: all lectures and tutorials, and all study material will be in English.

 

Course Contents

1) Introduction to loss prevention and risk analysis

Basic notions of safety, hazard and risk. Risk reduction strategies. Inherent safety. The risk assessment procedure. Introduction to relevant regulation.

2) Hazardous properties of substances

Introduction to hazardous properties of materials. Flammability. Toxicity. Environmental damage. The REACH regulation. Classification and labelling of hazardous materials. The material safety data sheet.

3) Hazard identification

Available tools for hazard identification. Analysis of case histories. Safety review. Checklists. What-if analysis. HazId analysis. HazOp analysis. FMECA. Fault tree analysis. Event tree analysis.

4) Frequency evaluation and reliability engineering

Basic notions of probabilities and frequencies. Generic frequencies for loss of containment. Random events and part count. The analysis of complex systems by means of fault trees. Introduction to reliability engineering. Non-repairable components. Repairable components. Reliability databases. The Markov model. Preventive maintenance. Human reliability. Systems reliability.

5) Consequence and damage assessment

Source terms models (liquid, gas, mixed-phase release). Dispersion models for neutral and heavy gases. Models for radiative effects from fire scenarios (pool fire, jet-fire, fireball, flash fire). Models for overpressure effects from explosions (physical explosions, BLEVEs, vapor cloud explosions, confined explosions, runaway reactions). Damage models for heat radiation, overpressure and toxic exposure (threshold and probit approach). Model selection criteria. Introduction to consequence assessment software.

6) Quantitative risk assessment

Quantitative risk assessment studies. Risk indicators: individual risk and societal risk. Risk re-composition. Risk acceptability criteria. Risk mitigation. Area risk analysis and transportation risk analysis. Examples of application.

Readings/Bibliography

Lees' Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, S. Mannan editor, IV ed., Butterworth-Heineman, Oxford, UK, 2011

D.A.Crowl, J.F.Louvar, Chemical process safety: fundamentals with applications, III ed., Prentice Hall, New Jersey, USA, 2011

Centre for Chemical Process Safety of AIChE, Guidelines for chemical process quantitative risk analysis (II ed.), New York, USA, 1999

Center for Chemical Process Safety of AIChE, Guidelines for hazard evaluation procedures (III ed.), AIChE, New York, USA, 2008

TNO, Methods for the evaluation of physical effects (Yellow book), Report CPR 14E (III ed.), The Hague, NL, 1997

H. Kumamoto, E. Henley, Probabilistic Risk Assessment and Management for Engineers and Scientists, 2nd edition, IEEE Press, New York, 1996

The above books (sometimes in an older edition) are available at the Biblioteca F.P.Foraboschi, via Terracini 28.

Teaching methods

Classroom lectures

Assessment methods

The final exam will be a written test including both multiple choice questions, open answers and some simple calculations possibly covering all the topics seen throughout the course.

To obtain a passing grade, students are required to know the key concepts of the subject, to demonstrate some ability for their critical application, and a comprehensible use of technical language.

A failing grade will be awarded if the student shows knowledge gaps in key-concepts of the subject, inappropriate use of language, and/or logic failures in the analysis of the subject.

Teaching tools

Lecture slides and integrative supporting material will be available on-line through AMS Campus service (or Alm@DL - UniBo credentials required for access).

Office hours

See the website of Giacomo Antonioni