Chemical Reaction Route Selection based on Fuzzy Assessment of Inherent Safety

Inherent safety should be implemented as early as possible in the design life cycle. In the early stage of chemical process design, the selection of chemical reaction route is the key design decision. The problem is how to evaluate route alternatives in the terms of inherent safety in the early design phases. The aim of this work is to develop an inherent safety assessment method and tool based on fuzzy logic concept. A synthetic route selection index, IeGn, is proposed to determine the fuzzy safety performance of a chemical route. The inherent safety assessment is expressed by fuzzy mathematics such as fuzzy sets, language variables, and fuzzy inference systems. The detailed procedure for fuzzy assessment of inherent safety of chemical reaction route selection is proposed based on the MATLAB Fuzzy Toolbox. As a case study, three reaction routines of glyphosate processes are evaluated. The inherent safety index of each process is obtained according to the fuzzy reasoning. The benign routine is determined according to the indices.