Process Safety Management and Analysis

This chapter focuses on process safety management (PSM) and the analyses associated with it. The major objective of PSM of highly hazardous chemicals is to prevent unwanted releases of hazardous chemicals especially into locations which could expose employees and others to serious hazards. A process hazard analysis (PrHA) provides information which will assist employers and employees in making decisions for improving safety and reducing the consequences of unwanted or unplanned releases of hazardous chemicals. The inherently safer design (ISD) philosophy is to permanently eliminate or reduce the hazards, thus avoiding, or reducing, the consequences of an accident. The approaches to the design of inherently safer processes and plants can be grouped into four major strategies including minimize, substitute, moderate and simplify. The “simplify” strategy can be achieved by designing a simpler process by eliminating as much complexity as possible, thus reducing the chances of errors in design, in implementation, and in operation.