The role of a commercial process simulator in computer aided HAZOP approach

Process safety is one of the key pillars of sustainable industrial development. In combination with the increasing use of computer aided process engineering, the demand for an appropriate model-based safety analysis tool capable to identify all hazardous situations leading to a major accident has increased. Commercial process simulators are equipped with extensive property databases and they employ high accuracy mathematical models providing the capability to simulate real behavior of a process operated within the area of the mathematical model validity. The main focus of this work is to improve standard hazard identification methods by the combination of hazard and operability (HAZOP) study and process simulation in commercial process simulator Aspen HYSYS. Software tool consisting of modules for computer simulation and complex analysis of simulation data will be proposed. The developed tool was applied to modern chemical productions exhibiting strong nonlinear behavior, where proper prediction of consequences can be very difficult. In the first case study, hazard identification in continuous glycerol nitration employing user-dependent analysis is presented. Mathematical methods of simulation data analysis independent of the user is demonstrated in the second case study of ammonia synthesis. Possibilities and limitations of the proposed tool are revealed and discussed in this work. (C) 2017 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.