(339f) Developing Process Safety Capsules for the Chemical Engineering Classroom

The news media present us with continued reminders that we have a long ways to go towards eliminating chemical process accidents. An important strategy for reducing the number and severity of chemical process accidents is to educate our future chemical engineers in process safety principles. Some chemical engineering departments may find it difficult to add new course requirements for process safety when the chemical engineering curriculum is already so crowded. Most faculty members have also moved through the academic ranks without the benefit of industrial experience and daily exposure to chemical process safety applications. One solution to bridge the gap in experience and the loaded course schedule is to integrate process safety principles into the chemical engineering core curriculum. This can be accomplished in a very natural way by incorporating process safety capsules into the curriculum. Process safety capsules are anecdotes, example problems, homework problems, laboratory assignments, or group projects that illustrate process safety principles. First we outline the key process safety principles that should be integrated into the chemical engineering undergraduate education. Next we demonstrate the relationship of these process safety principles to the chemical engineering core curriculum. Then we illustrate how to package process safety principles into capsules that can be incorporated into the chemical engineering core curriculum. Finally, we identify reference sources for these capsules.