Risk Assessment and Management of Chemical Processes

Well-designed chemical products also need to be safely manufactured. Building on the guiding principle of inherent safety and complementary to the previous chapter on product risk assessment, this chapter introduces the six steps involved in completing a risk assessment of chemical processes. It uses illustrations and simple examples to explain relevant concepts within each of the steps, and special emphasis is placed on describing commonly applied methods used for risk identification as well as for quantitative and qualitative consequence and probability analysis. These steps and methods are then applied through the assessment of a process step involving an autocatalytic reaction. Additional concepts and methods important to specifically identify and manage thermal risks are introduced in more detail separately in the next chapter.