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Inherent occupational health assessment during preliminary design stage

Hassim, Mimi Haryani and Hurme, M. (2010) Inherent occupational health assessment during preliminary design stage. Journal Of Loss Prevention In The Process Industries, 23 (3). pp. 476-482. ISSN 0950-4230

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jlp.2009.12.004

Abstract

Chemical process routes can already be assessed as early as in the development and design phases. Process screening should not look at economic and technical aspects only, but also the safety, health, and environmental performances. In this paper, a method called the Health Quotient Index (HQI) is presented for the preliminary process design phase. The HQI provides a simple approach to quantify workers' health risk from exposure to fugitive emissions e.g. in petrochemical plants. The method utilizes process data from flow sheet diagram, which is already available at the preliminarydesignstage. Since the mechanical details of the process are still unknown, a database of the precalculated fugitive emissions for typical operations in chemical plants was created to simplify the assessment. The HQI can be used to rank alternative process concepts or to quantify the risk level of processes. As a case study, six process routes for producing methyl methacrylate are discussed. Three health indexes are compared in the case study. The HQI is able to highlight the difference of hazard levels between the routes better as a result of more detailed assessment of the exposures.

Item Type:Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:risk assessment, health risk, process design, inherent safety, flow sheet diagram
Subjects:H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
ID Code:27074
Deposited By: Liza Porijo
Deposited On:24 Jul 2012 02:19
Last Modified:23 Feb 2017 09:14

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