Designing an inherently healthier process based on inherently safer design (ISD) concept: research and development stage

The rate of people dying due to occupational-related diseases is increasing each year. Although designing an inherently safer process can help in reducing the hazard level of a process by its nature without any additional protective, the aspects of health issues still remain unaddressed due to less research work carried out. Having said this, it is always a good and preferred practice to assess the health hazards as early as research and development (R&D) stage. At this stage, selection of the chemical synthesis routes is yet to be decided, and therefore, any modifications required can be done with minimal cost impact. Thus far, several works have been done in relation to occupational health especially by adapting the inherently safer design (ISD) principles (minimization, substitution, moderation, and simplification). However, most of them were only applicable for later stages of process design (preliminary design and basic engineering) and not in R&D stage. This paper proposes a systematic methodology for designing an inherently healthier process during the R&D stage using ISD principles. A flowchart that summarizes the proposed methodology is developed in guiding the user to reduce the hazard level of a process by analyzing the outcome of the prior health hazard assessment conducted to design a safer and healthier process. A case study on methyl methacrylate production is used to demonstrate the proposed methodology.