| While there is no "perfect" solution or absolute zero risk, engineering design can significantly reduce risk potential in the CPI. In Guidelines for Design Solutions to Process Equipment Failures, industry experts offer their broad experience in identifying numerous solutions to the more common process equipment failures including inherent safer/passive, active, and procedural solutions, in decreasing order of robustness and reliability. The book challenges the engineer to identify opportunities for inherent and passive safety features early, and use a risk-based approach to process safety systems specification. The book is organized into three basic sections: 1) a technique for making risk-based design decisions; 2) potential failure scenarios for 10 major processing equipment categories; and 3) two worked examples showing how the techniques can be applied. The equipment categories covered are: vessels, reactors, mass transfer equipment, fluid transfer equipment, solids-fluid separators, solids handling and processing equipment, and piping and piping components.
Special Details: Hardcover book plus 3.5" diskette for use in any word processing program with design solutions for use in PHAs.
Engineers like to think of their discipline as a rigorous application of scientific and mathematical principles to the problem of creating a useful object. To a certain extent, this is an appropriate description of the tools of engineering—those techniques that we use to translate a concept in the mind of the designer into a physical object. But, where does that mental image of the object to be built come from? At its heart, engineering is intuitive, and an art form. The engineer/designer's accumulated experience, and that of others, is applied to a defined problem. By intuitive and creative problem solving processes the engineer develops and refines a conceptual design, and uses the mathematical and scientific tools of engineering to translate a mental concept into reality.
The selection of the design basis for a process safety system is a problem like any other engineering problem. There is no equation or formula, no scientific principle, which will define the "best" design. Yes, there are scientific and mathematical tools which will help convert a design concept into something which can actually be constructed. But there is no general answer to the question ccWhat is the best design?" Each system must be considered on its own, with a thorough evaluation of all of the details of its environment and required functions, to determine what the optimal design will be. |
|