Inherently safer design for heat exchanger network

Gradual Synthesis of Heat Exchanger Networks Taking into Account Economic, Environmental, and Safety Factors

“…Safety Assessment. From the several indicators that can be used for inherent safety, such as the use of quantitative risk analysis, 21,22 or metrics, such as the Fire and Explosion Damage Index (FEDI) 23,24 or the combination of Process Route Index (PRI) 25 and Process Stream Index (PSI), 26,27 the safety aspects for each heat exchanger are evaluated in this work through the Inherent Safety Index for Shell and Tube Heat Exchangers (ISISTHE) proposed by Pasha et al 19 This index takes into account pressure, heating value, combustibility, and temperature difference for each heat exchanger, related to their average values in the network. For each heat exchanger, a value for each parameter is obtained using eqs 4−7.…”

“…Their superstructure included the selection of direct or indirect heat transfer, different types of heat exchangers, and limiting values for risk in certain types of individual exchangers. Pasha et al 19 heat exchangers and introduced two new inherent safety indices for HENs. Within this methodology, the worst heat exchanger is identified, and modifications to the network can be considered based on inherent safety principles.…”

“…Their superstructure included the selection of direct or indirect heat transfer, different types of heat exchangers, and limiting values for risk in certain types of individual exchangers. Pasha et al (2017) presented a framework to design inherently safer HENs. This framework considered only shell and tube heat exchangers and introduced two new inherent safety indices for HENs.…”

Process equipment common attributes for inherently safer process design at preliminary design stage

“…either explosion or the fire. For an explosion to occur, a substantial amount of flammable mass is needed to convert to a flammable cloud (Pasha et al, 2017). If an adequate quantity of flammable mass accumulates, then the probability of explosion scenario is higher.…”

“…However, these methods are not capable of accommodating the individual characteristics of process equipment (Kidam et al, 2016). Recently, a few methods have been developed to produce the inherently safer process design for heat exchanger network, process piping, and the mechanical material selection via the incorporation of dedicated characteristics (Athar et al, 2018;Athar et al, 2019b;Pasha et al, 2017). Nonetheless, the consideration of mutual characteristics shared by each individual process equipment for the inherently safer process designing has been the missing factor in the currently available methods.…”