CHEMICAL  PROCESS SAFETY

Faculty: Crowl, King

Process safety has become a very important industrial topic, especially since the enactment of new regulations from OSHA and EPA. The safety program at Michigan Tech (1) provides graduates with an understanding of the technical and cultural issues of chemical process safety and (2) provides industry with a research resource.

Michigan Tech has a required process safety course, taken at the beginning of the senior year, that provides the fundamental basis for process safety. During the students senior year, this knowledge is applied in the unit operations laboratory. The laboratory has a student-operated safety program modeled after current industrial practice and insures that our students have an awareness of the importance of safety.

The Hazards Characterization Laboratory is an industrial resource designed to characterize the hazardous properties of materials using small quantities. The laboratory is currently focusing on two areas: flammability and reactivity.

A substantial part of the research effort in physical property estimation and evaluation is focused on materials that are flammable, toxic, and/or reactive. This property effort directly supports the departmental emphasis on process safety and hazards evaluation.

Selected Equipment

• 20-liter automated explosion sphere
• Accelerating Rate Calorimeter (ARC)
• Reactive Systems Screening Tool (RSST)
• Setaflash flashpoint tester
• Auto-ignition temperature tester
• Keithley electrometer

Selected Theses/Dissertations

• Thermodynamic Availability Analysis applied to the characterization of Reactive Chemicals MS Thesis, T.Elwell, 2001.
• Vapor Flammability above Flammable Liquids and Aqueous Solutions of Flammable Liquids, MS Thesis, M.Brooks, 2001.
• Experimental Characterization and Prediction of Autoignition Temperature, MS Thesis, S. Heling, 2001.
• Determination of the Combustion Behavior for Pure Components and Mixtures Using a 20-Liter Sphere, PhD dissertation, C. Mashuga, 1999.
• Prediction of Reactive Behavior using Thermodynamic Availability, PhD dissertation, Y. Fan, 1998.
• Flashpoint Temperatures for Azeotropic Mixtures, MS thesis, E. Larson, in progress, 1998.
• Design Tools for Chemical Process Safety: Accident Probability, MS thesis, S. Yao, in progress, 1998.
• Implementation and Application of the Dow Hazard Evaluation Indices in a Computer-Based Environment, MS thesis, P. Piyush, 1996.