(11a) Catastrophic Incident Prevention and Proactive Risk Management in the New Biofuels Industry

This presentation is directed at assisting bioethanol manufacturers with preventing catastrophic incidents which could impact the entire Biofuels Industry. The biofuels industry has common hazards and potential consequences like other industries, related to the handling of flammable liquid processes and storage, dust explosion hazards and ammonia handling. This article ensures the reader understands these specific bioethanol manufacturer's process hazards are very real as demonstrated by past incidents and their catastrophic results. Regulatory obligations are discussed, as well as key engineering resources and design practices to ensure adequate safeguards are incorporated into the design of a new bioethanol manufacturing facility. The industry is fairly new, however the hazards and safeguards to reduce the risk level with the common hazards are not new. Preliminary indications are the industry has yet to establish the proactive risk management efforts that are required to reduce the risks to a tolerable level. This presentation is to provide the supporting data and direction to the Biofuels Industry to ensure each are headed down a path of preventing a future catastrophe.