Faisal Khan, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s, NL, Canada

Chemical Process Safety is an area of growing importance within the chemical, oil and gas, and allied industries. Worldwide, the chemical sector alone represents a $5 trillion industry^a and directly employs millions. The chemical sector is a fast-developing industry due to the growing dependence of society on energy resources and the rapid development of exploration and production technologies. The need for safe, well-managed processes within the industry has been highlighted by several recent disasters including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010 (caused by poor safety systems and cost cutting measures, according to a White House report) and the Tianjin disaster in China in 2015. These disasters not only cost human life but had a huge impact on the local environment and represent major financial losses for the companies involved.

The chemical, oil and gas, and allied industries are inherently risk-laden sectors. The continued occurrence of major process incidents has increased the awareness within the process industry about the importance of making development and operational decisions based on a thorough assessment of the associated risks to identify measures that can be taken to prevent potential losses. This increased awareness has shaped and influenced process safety science. Chemical process safety is a rapidly evolving area and is moving to more dynamic and adaptive methods of design and management to improve health and safety across the industry.

This book is the first volume of the Methods in Chemical Process Safety book series. This book series intends to be a one-stop resource for both academic researchers and professional practitioners. It aims to publish fundamentals of process safety science leading state-of-the-art advances occurring in the field while maintaining a practical approach for their application to the industries. An international editorial board and authorship ensures that this book series depicts the latest research developments from around the globe. Each volume will cover fully commissioned methods across the field of process safety, risk assessment and management, and loss prevention. This first volume discusses the Fundamentals of Process Safety from a practical perspective to make the book applicable for practitioners working within the industry.

This volume presents six Chapters. Chapter 1 provides an overview of process safety regulatory and technological evolutions. It also provides examples of different Methods in Chemical Process Safety, including methods to identify process hazards and to implement, measure, evaluate, monitor, and manage safety of hazardous processes. Chapter 2 reviews the process safety incidents in the last decades and highlights the importance of learning from both major incidents and near misses. Main elements and foundational blocks of process safety are discussed in Chapter 3. This Chapter helps safety practitioners to design and implement elements, which are required to optimize process safety management performance, efficiency, and effectiveness. Human error is frequently used to describe a cause of losses. Chapter 4 discusses the role of human factor in process safety and the importance of improving safety system designs rather than focusing on human failure as the root cause of accidents. Chapter 5 introduces the concept of risk-based process safety and the importance of considering both probability and consequences of process safety incidents in decision making. Finally, the process safety regulatory context is discussed in Chapter 6.

I am indebted to all members of the editorial and the contributory authors; this book could not have been published without their dedication, time, and commitment. On behalf of everyone who contributed in this volume, I hope that this book contributes to a safer future by serving as a source of knowledge in the field of chemical process safety. It is personally a great pleasure for me to bring together experts and compiling their contribution. I am imperfect and still learning and improving, I sincerely apology in advance for potential errors and misses in this volume. I encourage readers to share them with me for my self-learning and also to serve the community better. I look forward to learning from your feedback.