Session: Process Safety Education and Practice: From Classroom to Pilot Plant

This session is intended to allow those teaching chemical process design to share their experiences. While all accredited chemical engineering programs are expected to teach chemical process safety, few faculty are able to develop a course based on their personal research or practical experience. This creates a challenge to develop an engaging course based mostly on materials obtained from textbooks, web sources, and short courses. By sharing our experiences, it is hoped that we can pave the way for those currently tasked with developing and improving process safety courses. We particularly encourage talks by those who are relatively new to teaching process safety. Discussions of opportunities for improving source materials or for integrating courses into the curriculum are also encouraged. High safety standards in laboratories and pilot plants are a prerequisite to the successful development of new process technologies. The amount of material handled in laboratory units and pilot plants is small relative to production plants. However, handling of new materials, and lack of prior knowledge about potential reactions and interactions with other materials impose unknown risks while operating research apparatus at the extremes of process conditions. Therefore, thorough analysis of potential hazards and risks, and ways of mitigating these risks through safe design of equipment together with adopting safe procedures for commissioning and operating research equipment are extremely important. This session will focus on best practices and cases studies encompassing safety challenges and risk-mitigating procedures relevant to laboratory and pilot scale plants.