AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

To provide students a solid knowledge on process and occupational safety problems of industrial plants, to introduce evaluation tools and fundamental design approaches to minimize and prevent risk for man, environment and assets.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The focus of the course is to provide students with the basic scientific knowledge and the technical tools allowing to:

• assess and evaluate the reliability of compoments and treatment plants and processes;
• identify hazards of substances and plants and relevant safety implications in case of emissions and releses;
• assess risk  as a combination of frequency and severity and connected prevention and mitigation approaches; 
• acquire basic theoretical knowledge of emission and liquid release downstream treatments and relevant unit operations;
• understand the basic design approach for waste water treatment plants, also by numerical guided applications and team exercises..

The knowledge of these topics is considered essential for ensuring compliance with the safety and envirinmental regulations of the different indistrial plants, ensuring susatinable and environmental compatible production.

TEACHING METHODS

In-class lessons. Tutorials and numerical case-studies are presented and critically discussed during the lessons. Specific design exercises and application of process engineering are solved in group focusing on acquring transversal knowledge.

Students who already have valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the Course instructors and with Professor Federico Scarpa (federico.scarpa@unige.it  ), the Polytechnic School's disability liaison.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

1. Introduction

Process plant design basics. Techniques for simplified plant cost estimation. Environmental and accident risk. Unwanted events classification. Personnel and process safety. Primary water, wastewater: overall cycle and future developments. Main parameters for the primary- and waste-water characterization  Relevant national and international regulations in the fields of occupationa safety - process safety - waste water treatment - potabilization treatment .

2. Environmental Hazard Identification and Analysis

Gas, vapour and dust hazardous properties and their evaluation.  Hazard identification tools and application to case-studies. Fire, explosion, instability and reactivity. Check List; Ranking method; FMEA; Hazard and Operability Study (HazOp); Fault Tree Analysis (FTA).

3. Severity and environmental damage

Source term models.  Dispersion modelling of neutral and dense gas and cold jet. Post-release evolving  scenarios Damage analysis. Probit equations. Notable major accidents and relevant lessons.

4 . Gaseous emissions treatment

Local, individual and social risk. Damage models (threshold and Probit approach). Risk acceptability criteria. Risk mitigation and design of emergency relief systems. Land use planning.  Risk in multimodal HazMat transportation. HSE risk management. Risk perception. Basic tools for econimic estimation of fixed capital and running costs of process plants.

5. Water treatment plants

The mechanical pre-treatment of primary water and wastewater. The aerobic and anaerobic processes of biological treatment. The activated sludge process, biological reactions and kinetics. Type of activated sludge processes: suspended or fixed biomass, membranes. The sludge, from a problem to a resource; treatment and use. 

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Learning material is provided during the lessons period. Refernce text available at the University library or on the web:

Metcalf & Eddy – Wastewater Engineering – Treatment and Reuse – Mc Graw Hill - 2017

Edzwald - Water Quality and Treatment: A Handbook on Drinking Water, Sixth Edition – AWWA (American Water Works Association), ASCE (American Society of Civil Engineers), McGraw Hill - 2011

J. Casal "Evaluation of the effects and consequences of major accidents in industrial plants". Elsevier, Oxford, UK .

G. Nota. “Advances in Risk Management” Sciyo ed.(Chapter 4 : Trends, problems and outlook in process industry risk assessment and aspects of personal and process safety" by B. Fabiano and H. J. Pasman.  Free download at: http://www.intechopen.com/books/advances-in-risk-management

Further textbooks:

R.H. Perry, D.W. Green, “Perry’s chemical engineers’ Handbook” 9th ed., Mc Graw Hill – 2019.

G.G. Brown. “Unit Operations” Hoepli ed.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

LESSONS

LESSONS START

Accordig to the official lesson calendar isuued by Unversity of Genova, available at the following link:

https://corsi.unige.it/corsi/10720/studenti-orario

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

The oral final exam is set to evaluate student’s knowledge level, design and application abilities, as well as effective technical communication skills. It includes a critical discussion on numerical case-study according to the exercises performed during the lesson period. The final mark include the quality of presentation, the correct use of technical vocabulary and the ability of critical reasoning.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The aim is to provide knowledge and solving capabilities on emissions  in the process industry, with emphasis on  environmental and accident risk. The effectiveness assessment during the course development is performed by monitoring capabilities in numerical applications, lessons learned form incidents and analyzed case-studies.