(516c) Process Safety Instruction in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University

The Davidson School of Chemical Engineering at Purdue University has offered a three-credit hour process safety course, since the related ABET requirement came into effect in 2012. Based on faculty, student and industrial input the course evolved seven years ago to the rigorous technically based course taught today and required of all seniors. The course uses the text ‘Chemical Process Safety: Fundamentals with Applications’, by Crowl & Louvar, now in its 4^th edition, which provides perhaps 75% of the course content. Students take the course late in the curriculum due its application of concepts taught in earlier classes, such as: mass and energy balances, fluid mechanics of liquid, gas and two-phase flow, thermodynamics, and reaction kinetics.

The course begins by distinguishing low frequency-high consequence process safety events from personnel safety, and metrics to measure performance. The fourteen elements of OSHA process safety management are covered, as well as other related regulations. During the semester a CSB incident reenactment video is shown each week, related to the material covered, e.g., West, Texas ammonium nitrate explosion when addressing reactive hazards. Tools to assess the consequences of incidents compromise perhaps 75% of the material in terms of toxicology & probits, industrial hygiene & toxic materials, modeling of liquid & vapor releases, dispersion modeling, fire & explosion modeling, and reactivity hazards. Following a lecture on how to conduct an incident investigation, students are grouped in teams of three, assigned a unique industrial incident to investigate for root causes, culminating in a ~15-page professional report. Many of the quantitative tools discussed in class are typically employed in their analysis, such as blast analysis, dispersion modeling, etc. This is the highlight of the course for many students each semester.

The course then shifts to industrial applications, addressing safe designs and operations, including the content of PFD’s and P&IDs, as well as the placement and sizing of single and two-phase relief devices. Approximately one month is then spent on process hazards and risk analyses. Multiple options are covered for each such as checklists, What-If and HAZOPs, and Event & Fault trees, bow-tie diagrams, risk matrices, Layer of Protection Analysis, and Quantitative Risk Assessment. The course concludes with a lecture on emergency response and related CSB video.

With the department’s commitment to process safety, the Purdue Process Safety & Assurance Center (P2SAC) was formed in 2014. Conferences are held each semester, with typically 80 companies and +180 industry representatives registered. Currently at 20 sponsors, the last few years ~25 projects suggested by industry have been undertaken, conducted by PhDs, Professional Masters students and undergraduates. Graduate students engaged in process safety research often take the course noted above, for which they also prepare a research report on a topic of their choosing, as well as additional homework problems each week. More details regarding the center can be found at: engineering.purdue.edu/p2sac.