Enhanced Inherent Safety Intervention Framework

Inherent safer design focuses on avoiding hazards rather than controlling them, especially by reducing the amount of hazardous materials or the number of hazardous operations in the plant. Usually, the assessment of safety in a plant is done towards the end of the process design stage, however inherent safety is applied in the initial stages of process design. The concept of inherent safety has been around for quite some time although it is yet to be widely accepted in the industries. The predecessor of this research has been successful in inventing a few indices that have been able to gauge the level of inherent safety in various process routes and process streams. This research aims to further improve the existing work by adding in the evaluation of the consequences and the frequencies of the risks in the streams that are found to be the least inherently safe. A methodology has been developed that enables the calculation of these factors. The combined values of the consequence and frequency indices will help determine if the selected streams are to be redesigned to better fit the inherent safety standards.