The principle of inherent safer design is cheapest if applied at the early stage of process development and design. And, the integration of safety into process design and optimization is highly desired. This research proposes a procedure for integrating safety into design and optimization framework by using safety parameters as an optimization constraint (Suardin, 2005).
As a preliminary attempt, this research employs Dow’s Fire and Explosion Index as a safety parameter to be integrated into process optimization. The proposed procedure of integrating F&EI into process design and optimization framework is verified by applying it into process design and optimization of reactor-distillation column system. As mentioned earlier, this research is focused on integrating safety, not the Dow’s fire and explosion index, into process design and optimization framework. Developing or improving existing evaluation index to generate the safety expression gives better safety parameter representation, which couples this research with the inherent safety index research at the Center.
