The course is designed to provide students a solid knowledge on process and occupational safety problems of industrial plants, on reliability of components and complex systems, as well as to introduce evaluation tools and fundamental design approaches to downstream treatment plants to minimize and prevent risk for man, environment and assets.
The focus of the course is to provide students with the basic scientific knowledge and the technical tools allowing to:
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ricevimento: Upon appointment to be fixed in advance by e-mail, at the teacher office: DICCA - Chemical Engineering Section, Polytechnic School, first floor via Opera Pia 15 - Genoa.
Accordig to the official lesson calendar isuued by Unversity of Genova, available at the following link:
https://corsi.unige.it/corsi/10720/studenti-orario
The oral final exam is set to evaluate student’s knowledge level, design and application abilities, as well as effective technical communication skills on the topics of reliability, environmantal/process risk prevention and mitigation, emission and release treatment plants and water management.. 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.
Three exam sessions are planned during the Winter session (mid Januray-Febraury) and for exam sessions during the Summer session (June, july and September), An additional session will be planned during the lesson break period scheduled according to the officil academic calendar..
The aim of the course is to provide knowledge and solving capabilities on emissions in the process industry, with emphasis on environmental and accident risk. On these grounds the exam will aim at verifying the correct theoretical knowledge of the topics explained during the lessons as well as the critical capability of problem solving practical examples, similar to thos presented during the presneted and discussed numerical exercises.The effectiveness assessment during the course development is performed by monitoring capabilities in numerical applications, lessons learned form incidents and analyzed case-studies.
