(54f) Development of an Elective Process Safety Course at the University of Michigan

The chemical industries have an excellent track record for safety. However, these operations pose risk and catastrophic incidents have occurred. For example, in December of 2007, a runaway reaction led to an explosion at the T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville, Florida. Following this incident, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) recommended improvement of the undergraduate Chemical Engineering curriculum in the United States. In response, the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) updated the requirements for Chemical Engineering programs noting that “the curriculum must include the engineering application of basic sciences to the design, analysis, and control of chemical, physical, and/or biological processes, including the hazards associated with these processes.”

The University of Michigan has updated its Chemical Engineering curriculum to include process safety related homework modules for each core course and incorporate process safety concepts into the senior Design Course such as Inherently Safer Design. In addition, an elective Process Safety course (ChE 407) was developed beginning in 2016. This industrial course applies the fundamentals of Process Safety to identify potential hazards, anticipate process upsets or equipment failures, predict the possible severity of the associated incidents and, propose means to prevent, control or mitigate process risks. As this course is intended to prepare students for a real-world environment, various speakers from industry are invited to present first-hand knowledge of industrial process safety, as well.

The course follows an overall workflow for performing a Hazard Identification and Risk Analysis (HIRA) study described in the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) guidebook “Chemical Hazard Engineering Fundamentals” (CHEF) and used in industry to address the following questions (as shown in the attached image).

What is Process Safety?

What are the Hazards?

What Could Go Wrong?

How Bad Could It Be?

How Likely is It to Happen?

Is the Risk Tolerable?

How can we Sustain and Improve Performance?

This presentation will discuss the evolution of the course from a one credit-hour developmental elective consisting of a series of guest lectures to a two credit-hour “permanent” course that incorporates 24 lectures, several CSB videos with incident reports, selected Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (SAChE) learning modules, individual and group problem solving, and a detailed term project will be discussed.