Cost-effective maintenance of safety and security barriers in the chemical process industries via genetic algorithm

Chemical plants face safety hazards and security threats that may induce catastrophic scenarios. Safety and security barriers are employed widely to protect chemical plants from accidental and intentional undesired events and mitigate consequences. Managing safety and security barriers effectively and economically is a research topic with...

Assessing industrial symbiosis opportunities for a selected industrial cluster under different decarbonisation options: Towards a decision framework

According to the Paris agreement in 2015, global warming should be limited by applying new innovative technologies in the industry in order to keep the global temperature 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Governmental organisations, institutes and manufacturing companies themselves are concerned about high emissions and all together...

Safety barrier performance assessment by integrating computational fluid dynamics and evacuation modeling for toxic gas leakage scenarios

Toxic gas leakage represents a type of major process accident scenario threatening human life. Technical and non-technical safety barriers are employed to prevent toxic gas leakage accidents or mitigate the possible catastrophic consequences. Evacuation must be executed in severe toxic gas release scenarios. The performance assessment of...

An event-driven probabilistic methodology for modeling the spatial-temporal evolution of natural hazard-induced domino chain in chemical industrial parks

Natural hazards may rapidly lead to a massive domino chain in chemical industrial parks (CIPs). This work develops a high-efficiency and systematic analytical framework that is applicable to a broad range of uncertain and time-varying factors related to the evolution process of natural hazard-induced domino chain (NHDC). Specifically, the...

Developing a barrier management framework for dealing with Natech domino effects and increasing chemical cluster resilience

A domino effect triggered by a natural event (a so-called Natech domino effect) represents a typical high-impact low-probability (HILP) event, which may lead to catastrophic consequences. The presence of safety barriers could have an impact on the effects by impeding propagation patterns and mitigating potential consequences. However,...

An assessment of sustainable process technology adoption in the Dutch chemical industry

The chemical industry needs to quickly adapt to deal with climate change's environmental and economic challenges. The chemical industry is a sizable contributor to climate change. On the other hand, their contribution to financial stability and growth is considerable. Adopting sustainable process technologies is the most promising solution for...

Towards a zero-emission naphtha cracking industry in the Netherlands: A model-based exploration of policy options to accelerate electrification

Following the Paris Agreement, the national government of the Netherlands reached the Climate Agreement together with more than 100 organizations. As part of this agreement, the industry sector is faced with the ambitious goal of 59% CO2 reduction in 2030 with respect to 1990 levels. Since the naphtha cracking industry is one of the most...

Chemical industry in China: The current status, safety problems, and pathways for future sustainable development

Safety risks have become an obstacle to the sustainability of the chemical industry in China since many chemical companies were forced to close down by China's government in the past three years. This study investigates chemical safety in China in order to identify the causes of the major accidents and accompanying casualties, formulating the...

A systematic literature review on safety research related to chemical industrial parks

The increasing demand for chemical products has driven the construction and development of chemical industrial areas, or so-called 'chemical industrial parks' (CIPs), but this has intrinsically raised the risk of major accidents. Therefore, it is significant and urgent to summarize the state of art and research needs in the field of CIP...

Reinventing the Chemical Industry: A Feasibility Study applied on the Backbone of an Energy System

The Need for Renewable Fuels<br/>Global warming demands an urgent and thus dramatic change in the current focus and approach of producing energy. Current renewable energy production is mainly focused on solar and wind. However, for many industries their infrastructure is not adapted to electricity as an energy source. Therefore, a full...

An emergency response decision matrix against terrorist attacks with improvised device in chemical clusters

Chemical industrial areas may constitute potential targets for deliberate actions by terrorists. Terrorists having sufficient knowledge of chemical process operations or plant layout may take advantage of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to cause major events such as fire, explosion and toxic gas dispersion with cross-border consequences...

Revolutionizing safety and security in the chemical and process industry: applying the CHESS concept

This paper argues that a new concept, summarized as ‘CHESS’, should be used in the chemical industry to further substantially advance safety (where we use the term in a broad sense, that is, safety and physical security, amongst others). The different domains that need to be focused upon, and where innovative initiatives should be taken are...

Groningen–Rotterdam: Changing dynamics. The reduction of gas production in the Netherlands and the influence on the energy dependency of the Rotterdam industrial cluster

The Dutch energy system is greatly dependent on natural gas. In 2013 the primary energy consumption in the Netherlands was for 43% supplied with natural gas (CBS, 2015a). With this proportion of natural gas the Netherlands has the highest share in national primary energy consumption of Europe (Eurogas, 2014). The reason for this large share of...

Improving the economic performance of AkzoNobel's EVB plant

AkzoNobel Energie Voorzienings Bedrijf (EVB – Energy Supply Company) is located at the Botlek business park in Rotterdam. EVB produces and supplies energy and utilities to other production plants at the Botlek site. Due to the intertwined value chain and reuse of each other’s residual and waste products, the situation at the Botlek is...

Participant observation in risk problems

Participant observation is a method to collect information through active participation in the social world that is under study, in this case two different risk-related working areas where confidentiality and secrecy are paramount. In reality there is a difference between what people do and say they do. With participant observation this...

The Organization of a Cross Border CHP-Alliance: Managing the Cultural Differences

CHP-Belduco is a Combined Heat and Power plant, which was built on the site of Belchem, a chemical company in Flanders, Belgium. The purpose of the plant is to deliver steam and other utilities to the chemical plants on the site. In order to do that efficiently, the combination of heat and electricity is used. The plant is owned and managed by...

Efficiency Analysis of a Planning Process in Chemical Industry: Improving the Planning Process of the Polyols' supply chain using Lean Six Sigma

Eco-innovations in the chemical industry: Motivation factors and barriers

The chemical industry is considered as one of the most important sectors from an environmental point of view. As a result, many chemical companies have been at the forefront of both using innovative technologies and up-to-date environmental management practices. However, the sector faces an ever increasing pressure from its stakeholders and...