Safer management of process changes in chemical reactors

Nowadays many chemical industries are SMEs where multi-purpose batch or semi-batch reactors are commonly used. Vent sizing for realistic runaway scenario is not an easy task for such enterprises since they have usually few resources and use multi-purpose reactors with fast process turnovers. As a co...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of loss prevention in the process industries 2010-07, Vol.23 (4), p.515-521
Main Authors: Dellavedova, Marco, Gigante, Lucia, Lunghi, Angelo, Pasturenzi, Christian, Cardillo, Paolo, Gerosa, Niccolò P., Rota, Renato
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Chemical industries
Chemical industry
Chemical reactors
Design engineering
Emergencies
HVAC
Maximum reactor load
Multi-purpose reactors
Productivity
Reactors
Runaway reactions
Safety management
Sizing
Small & medium sized enterprises-SME
Tasks
Vent sizing
Vents
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Nowadays many chemical industries are SMEs where multi-purpose batch or semi-batch reactors are commonly used. Vent sizing for realistic runaway scenario is not an easy task for such enterprises since they have usually few resources and use multi-purpose reactors with fast process turnovers. As a consequence these batch and semi-batch reactors are usually equipped with emergency relief systems sized once forever when the reactor is designed. This can lead to a large underestimation of the vent area in case of runaway reactions occurring when processes different from the ones considered for originally sizing the vent are carried out. The approach proposed in this work aims to identify the maximum reactor load leading to safe conditions even in case of runaway phenomena to be handled with the emergency relief system already installed (or even with a smaller vent area). This approach allows avoiding the change of the emergency relief system with a larger vent area (as required every time a new more hazardous process has to be carried out on existing reactors) at the price of lower plant productivity.
ISSN:0950-4230
1873-3352
DOI:10.1016/j.jlp.2010.04.001