Process safety is a fundamental component of sound process design. Although the chemical industry has demonstrated an excellent safety record over the years, the quantities and hazardous nature of many of the substances typically handled by chemical manufacturers make the potential for large scale disasters a constant concern. Because safety is so critical in industry, it is vital to introduce the concepts of safe process design practices during undergraduate chemical engineering education. Gaining an appreciation of this during a chemical engineer's education can only enhance chemical manufacturing safety in the future. An understanding of how risk is quantified in the chemical process industries will allow future process design engineers to mitigate those risks at the earliest stages of conceptual process development – at the stage where the engineer has the greatest influence on the final process design. This poster will introduce, via a case study example, the benefit of including risk assessment methodology and inherently safer design practices into the process design education of chemical engineering students. This poster will illustrate an industrial case study example that can be used to introduce the concepts of risk assessment and inherently safe process design into the classroom.

The case study to be presented as the classroom example will be based on two alternative processes for breaking an alcohol-water azeotrope. Using risk assessment methodology and inherently safe design practices, the process safety implication of both processes will be illustrated. This design problem will be structured to demonstrate how these types of scenarios are evaluated in industry, and how these techniques can be carried over into the classroom.

One of the responsibilities of every chemical engineer is to ensure that the excellent safety record enjoyed by the chemical process industry is maintained. Therefore it is important to begin introducing the fundamentals of process safety during undergraduate chemical engineering education. The purpose of this poster presentation will be to underscore, by case study example, the natural relationship between inherently safe process design and conceptual process development and how it can be integrated into undergraduate process design education. As will be illustrated by this case study, taking a holistic approach to process safety education can serve to reinforce the benefits of beginning to consider the safety implications of the decisions made during conceptual process development. By reinforcing the benefits of making inherently safe design choices during conceptual process development, students of process engineering will be better prepared for the challenges of meeting the high standards of safety set by today's chemical industry.