Mitigating Safety and Regulatory Risk in a Chemical Project Effort

Safety and regulatory risk are inherent to the development of new chemical technologies and processes.  Before a product can be brought to market or a process brought online, hazard assessments may be necessary to evaluate the safety of the product or process during intended and unintended use.  Performing a proper hazard analysis for a new system is complicated by the lack of available process data.  Issues such as corrosion or side products formed during cleaning can be missed when testing at small scales.  When developing consumer products, the interactions between the uninformed consumer and a potentially energetic, toxic, or reactive product can also be difficult to predict with small sample sizes and consideration of consumer misuse may be necessary for some products.  This talk will discuss the role of code reviews and process hazard analyses in product or process development and discuss relevant case studies.