| Abstract: | Commonly regarded as one of the most effective and reliable tools for improving the safety of a process, Inherently Safer Design (ISD) focuses on reducing the inherent hazards of a design before applying additional safety measures. However, while an intensified process may be inherently less hazardous, if the design restricts the controllability of the process, then the design may have a higher risk and be less safe overall. Therefore, considering both the inherent hazard contained by the process and the ease by which these hazards can be controlled is necessary for a more complete evaluation of the inherent safety of a system. Efforts have been made to assess the safety, controllability, and cost-optimality of process designs. However, no current methodology is capable of comprehensively assessing all three aspects at once. This study proposes a framework for the integration of design, safety, and control strategies that will allow for the simultaneous design and control of an inherently safer process. The proposed work spans: (i) a comprehensive review of risk tolerance using the ALARP/ALARA methodology (ii) a study on a comparison between consequence modelling and safety metrics, and their applicability in process design (iii) the development of a systematic framework for the synthesis of process designs with dynamic safety, operability, and design constraints, and its application to a benzene-toluene distillation column. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from https://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/197767 |
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