Systemic risks and human errors are the root causes of process safety incidents in offshore operations. Human factor amounts for more than 70 % of offshore incidents and among those 75 % of them are due to perceptual errors involving rich information displays. Offshore drilling console is one such area where a display of hundreds of parameters and alarms maintains a constant cognitive load on the driller

Harbin-Changchun Megalopolis (HCM), as one of the vehicle production centers in China, has rapidly increasing vehicles on road supported by people’s increasing purchasing power, having directly and indirectly led to air pollution. This study systematically analyzes tempo-spatial characteristics of vehicle emissions by combining International Vehicle Emissions (IVE) model with the Technical guidelines

The aim of this study was to develop powdered and granular activated carbon modified with N doped TiO2, namely PAC-TiO2N and respective, GAC-TiO2N by sol-gel method, starting from commercial activated carbon, for the removal from water of diclofenac (DCF), an emerging pollutant. The synthesized materials were characterized systematically and morphostructural, light absorption and electrical charge

The centrifugal mother liquor (CML) discharged by polymer enterprises is a typical refractory organic wastewater with a variety of pollutants. This paper proposes a novel homogeneous and heterogeneous mixed Fenton oxidation strategy for the degradation of phenol and other organic compounds in CML. First, two promising CML treatment schemes are selected from six alternatives. Second, with the minimal

In this research an process flowsheet is introduced for carbon dioxide conversion to methanol and a mathematical framework is prepared to analyze the operability of proposed plant. The main steps in the designed process are syngas production through methane tri-reframing, syngas purification, methanol synthesis in the isothermal reactor and syngas recycling. To develop a detail framework, the methane

In recent years, a new water treatment technology based on microwave discharge electrodeless lamp (MDEL) has been developed. Hence, we designed an integrated system of microwave/electrodeless discharge ultraviolet/ozone (MW/UV/O3) for sewage sterilization according to the theoretical study of MDEL. The experiment was designed to test the ability to sterilize Escherichia coli and Bacillus subtilis by

Kick, or hydrocarbon influx, is one of the significant challenges during the drilling operation. A kick happens when the formation pressure exceeds the hydrostatic pressure of mud weight. Detection of a kick at an early stage spares more time to take necessary actions to prevent its growth and mitigate the potential well blowout. There are varieties of methods applied for early kick detection. The

A car accident involving the oil tank may result in continuously spreading spill fires in tunnels, which poses great threats to the entrapped cars. However, there is still no relevant work concerning this issue. This paper experimentally investigates the spill fires in a tunnel by means of a model-scale tunnel and a steel trench where the liquid fuel flows and burns. The findings show that in a quiescent

A Safety Research project was carried out in an ammonia plant of OCI Nitrogen, located at the Chemelot site in Geleen, The Netherlands. This research focused on the development of a method to monitor accident processes in the chemical industry mainly caused by mechanical integrity of static equipment like vessels, tanks and heat exchangers. A significant part of the mechanical integrity failure scenarios

Large quantities of volatile and flammable liquids are used in extraction process, which are recognized as having a high fire potential. The flash point is one of the major physical properties used to determine the fire and explosion hazards of liquids. The flash point variation and the fire risk were studied for the extraction system. Experimental results were firstly presented for three ternary systems

In this study, a novel way to enhance the power-output performance of a Rhodococcus pyridinivorans (HR-1) −inoculated microbial fuel cell (MFC) with salinomycin was demonstrated. In the 5 mg/L salinomycin-treated MFC, the maximum power density and current density was promoted by 63.9 % and 28.1 % times, respectively. Cyclic-voltammetry (CV) analysis revealed that upon the addition of salinomycin the

Na2CO3/γ-Al2O3 is one of the most promising sorbents to capture CO2 from industrial flue gas streams due to its high efficiency in low-temperature and low cost. The textural properties of the γ-Al2O3 support, such as specific surface area and pore volume play key roles in performance of the sorbent. Therefore, the aim of this study was to improve the sorbent performance, using several γ-Al2O3 supports

The release of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) into the environment is increasing at a rapid pace due to rising production and incorporation into a variety of consumer products, collectively referred to as nano-enabled products (NEPs). During the life cycle of the NEPs, ENMs can be released into aquatic environments. The ENMs released during the various life cycle stages are often not in their pristine

The aim of this study was to evaluate the regeneration efficiency of fibrous filters clogged with metallic ultrafine particles, as several complaints have been made by industrials in the metallurgical field about difficulties linked to the cleaning of filters. Aging of the dust deposits on the filters surface was also reported to be problematic. In this work, the metallic nanoparticles were generated

The purpose of this research was threefold: to change the surface tension of an ore-leaching solution through adding surfactants, to improve the bioleaching of sulfide ore, and to strengthen the desulfurization effect of microorganisms on sulfide ore. Taking different types of surfactants in various concentrations as the impact factors, we evaluated their effect on the relationship between the change

Large-scale experiments could reflect the real status of coal spontaneous combustion and therefore were conducted to investigate the characteristics of coal oxidation during the development and decaying processes. Three coals with different metamorphic grades were collected and tested to acquire the information including the temperature profiles, movement of the hottest spots, gaseous products, limiting

In this study, Fenton oxidation and activated persulfate oxidation were used to investigate the optimized in situ chemical oxidation (ISCO) process for its efficiency on petroleum-hydrocarbon contaminated groundwater cleanup. In the batch and column experiments using benzene and toluene as the target compounds, oxidant depletion, soil oxidant demand (SOD), adsorption of oxidant on soils, and oxidation

Phosphine, a trace gas, is usually detected in aerobic digestion. To explore the key steps of gaseous phosphorus release during anaerobic digestion, a digestive medium was inoculated with anaerobic sludge and fertilizer to produce phosphine. The relationship between phosphine and digestive products, such as methane, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and volatile fatty acids, was investigated. The experimental

Estimating gas source terms is essential and significant for managing a gas emission accident. Optimization method, as a kind of estimation methods, is helpful to figure out the source terms by solving the inverse problem. Significantly, the performance of optimization method on source term estimation is affected by the accuracy of forward dispersion model. To enhance the estimation accuracy, previous

In order to assess the potential hazard of oil and oil product spills, it is necessary to accurately determine the evaporation rate from the multi-component spill surface. In this paper, a multi-component pool evaporation model has been built and applied to the gasoline spill. The computational procedure has been implemented in the ANSYS Fluent code 18.0 through user-defined functions (UDFs). Gasoline

HMX is one of the best high-energy explosives in military applications. In this paper, the reaction calorimeter (RC1e) was used to monitor the reaction process of HMX synthesis by the nitrourea method. The research results show that the heat release rate is large on the reaction feeding stage, the feed rate should be controlled. The thermal parameters, such as adiabatic temperature rise(ΔTad,r) and

Typical benzene series (benzene, toluene, xylenes), while having important applications in chemical industry, are also threatening industrial safety and daily life due to high flammability. In this work, we measured the flammability limits of benzene, toluene, xylenes by ASHRAE method based on E681-09 at elevated temperatures (373 K, 423 K and 473 K). As the temperature increased, the flammable concentration

Major chemical accidents may threaten the lives and health of people in the surrounding areas. Large-scale regional evacuation is a key measure for protecting the public from these accidents. In such unconventional emergency situations, the diffusion of evacuation warnings has a significant impact on the public's decision on whether to take evacuation actions. Through an investigation and analysis

Variations in energy demands require combined heat and power (CHP) systems to be more flexible in adjusting its operations. However, high flexibility is often achieved at the expense of other aspects. In other words, increasing flexibility of a CHP system would require large number of equipment to start-up or shutdown. This would lead to potentially high emissions and high start-up/shutdown costs due

Safety and environmental risk go hand in hand with industrial development. However, it is unclear whether there is a linear or nonlinear relationship between risk and industrial development. Perhaps, it is case dependent. Some industrial endeavours such as offshore development, activities in a harsher environment, or development requiring new technologies (untested and untrusted technologies) may pose

The discharge of effluent from the pharmaceutical industries is a major source of environmental pollution due to the carcinogenic nature of contaminants. The current work investigates the treatment of pharmaceutical industry effluent (PIE) using ultrasonic horn. Under controlled operating conditions, the effect of addition of hydrogen peroxide (ratio of COD of PIE: H2O2 varied over the range from 1:1

Over the past two decades, the production of expanded polystyrene (thermocol) has increased drastically due to its versatile applications. Consequently, the accumulation of waste thermocol in the environment has also increased alarmingly. Proper disposal and reuse of waste thermocol has become a serious global concern. In this work, a critical review has been made on various options available for the

Flame acceleration in the hydrogen–air mixture in the presence of porous materials was investigated experimentally. Polyurethane foam with different pore size placed on top and button sides of the channel was found to greatly affect flame acceleration in the channel. High–speed schlieren images showed, that polyurethane foam with larger pores leads to flame wrinkling. Dependencies of the flame velocity

Gas is one of the most dangerous byproducts of coal in mines. Before gas accidents occur, an abnormally increased gas concentration can be observed. Therefore, a prediction of the gas concentration in coal mines is of great significance to prevent the gas accident and ensure the production safety in the mines. By calculating the Pearson correlation coefficient for the gas concentration of different

Traditional reliability theory cannot objectively describe the multi-state of the pipeline system with reliability analysis. In addition, studies on reliability modeling of the multi-state pipeline system assume that the states of each pipeline unit are independent. In this work, an efficient method was proposed to identify the performance relationship. Specifically, a model of a multi-state reconstruction

In deep geological drilling processes, the geological environment becomes more complex with the increasing of the drilling depth; consequently, the risks of downhole incidents get higher. If not discovered in time, these downhole incidents may develop to serious drilling accidents, causing significant financial and environmental losses. In this paper, a new method is proposed to diagnose downhole incidents

A safe operation of a wastewater collection and transport system must consider the probability of overflow events in and off the industry limits. In this paper the reliability of the collection and wastewater transport system of a refinery is assessed by using Cox reliability models. These models were adjusted to take into account the complex nature of the system. Rainfall is considered a model covariable

In this study, a few extractive distillation processes with ethylene glycol as solvent are proposed to separate high-purity ethanol and tert-butanol from industrial effluents, including direct ED, indirect ED and heat pump assisted indirect ED. All these processes are optimized with targeting minimum annual total costs by a sequential iteration algorithm. After that, a head-to-head comparison is completed

The air pollutant emission related to the anthropogenic activities affecting the environment and human health was a critical problem. Fine or ultrafine particulate matters were the major air pollutant from the industries. Thus, the high-gravity technology has holistically been applied to the integrated air pollution control due to its advances of low land demand, high mass transfer rate, low economic

For the clean and efficient utilizaiton of waste plastics, an integrated flowsheet, including low temperature heat treatment pulverization and composite pellet reduction, has been proposed and the fundamental research has been conducted. The PE film could be easily pulverized by heat treatment at 250 °C for 20 min after mixed with coal powder (mass ratio of PE 20% of coal). The pulverized heated mixture

Soil-like material (SLM) was mined from five municipal solid waste (MSW) dumps to assess its potential for reuse in earthwork projects. The contamination levels of SLM (< 4.75 mm) were determined based on organic content, total soluble solids, the release of colored leachate, and heavy metals. Organic content in SLM was found to be 4-24.5% whereas in the local soils (nearby areas) it was found to be

This study unveiled the synergistic effects of catalytic co-pyrolysis of the macroalgae (Enteromorpha prolifera) and waste plastics (HDPE) for enhanced biofuels production. Results revealed that catalytic co-pyrolysis of macroalgae (seaweeds) and waste plastics lowered greatly the high contents of the acids, oxygenates and nitrogen-containing compounds in the seaweed bio-oils, while the aromatics and

This study simulated the flow and near-field plume dispersion in an urban-like environment under unstable, neutral and stable atmospheric stratification using the steady Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) methodology. First, a validation study for two trials of the Mock Urban Setting Test (MUST) experiments is performed to examine the predictive performance of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)

Accidental subsea gas releases may cause an underwater gas plume migrating from the seafloor to the sea surface, which may pose offshore fire hazards or instability of ships. Numerical simulation is an efficient approach to model the underwater gas behavior and support risk assessment. To verify the availability of numerical modeling methods for the underwater gas release, this paper establishes a

We report the results of laboratory investigations of the behaviour during explosion mitigation by channels typical of those used in commercial explosion arrester devices. Experimental results are presented first of shock and detonation wave interaction with a miniaturised matrix of narrow channels aligned parallel to the incoming flows. The results with a larger scale device using the same channel