Mission

To develop and dissipate knowledge of safer and cleaner process operation

Description
Process safety and risk management focuses on activities or events involving accidental release of chemicals and industrial wastes, and deals with the prevention of catastrophic and dangerous occurrences that have a negative impact on human safety, health, environment and the overall viability of an enterprise. It includes activities such as accident forecasting, impact assessment, quantification of risk to industry, human health, environment and business, and development of strategies for prevention and control of such occurrences. All these activities require precise information about chemicals, their behavior under different operating conditions, process upsets, and design parameters. Many of this information may be derived through experimentation. This lab provides basic infrastructure facilities for investigating chemical behavior in different operating conditions (especially in offshore operating conditions), process upsets leading to accidents, and setting up of design parameters for safety measures.

Objectives
The basic objective of this facility is to predict behavior of the process in order to:

• judge the suitability of the proposed process or operation
• produce data for engineering purposes including regular operation as well as operation under upset situation
• investigate measures to prevent the upsetting situation that may lead to accidents.
• design process safety measures to deal with eventualities.
• test designed safety measures against unexpected side reactions, decomposition, or chemicals and mixtures.

This lab also aims to develop new models and methodologies for:

• accident forecasting
• probabilistic risk assessment
• risk based safety measure design
• risk based inspection and maintenance management

In process facilities (offshore or onshore) there may be many types of hazards present, however this facility focuses on three main types of hazards:

• pressure hazards
• thermal hazards
• reactive hazards