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Resilience Assessment Framework for Chemical Process Systems
Abstract
Resilience is essential to ensure safe and sustainable process operations. In this research, a resilience assessment framework for chemical process systems is proposed. Firstly, literature that addresses applications of resilience engineering principles to various fields is reviewed to identify research gaps to be investigated. It was concluded that resilience assessment was predominantly performed using expert judgement in the literature.
Secondly, a resilience assessment framework of process systems with fast responses, such as reaction systems is proposed. The three characteristics of resilience: absorption, adaptation, and recovery are modelled using system design variables with covariate consideration. Subsequently, these three characteristics are integrated to assess resilience. Reliability and maintainability are used for modeling the system’s performance. The proposed framework is explained using the assessment of an autocatalytic reactor as a case study. A thermal runaway reaction is modelled, and an operational intervention strategy such as adding inhibition is tested to enhance the resilience of the reactor. It was concluded that as the inhibitor injection time decreased from 5.8 min to 1 min, the value of the proposed resilience metric increased from 0.7 to 0.9. This case study confirmed the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed framework.
However, despite significant efforts to mitigate the risk of failures in chemical process designs, accidents still occur because of unaccounted faults. Therefore, to address this problem as the next part of this research, an adaptive modeling technique called operable adaptive sparse identification of system is implemented for fault prognosis. The time to failure of the system is determined based on the predicted system behavior. The system’s absorption, adaptation, and recovery performances are modeled for different available intervention strategies, and they are evaluated based on a resilience metric. A case study is conducted on a batch reactor in thermal runaway condition, and various intervention strategies, including inhibitor injection at different times, are employed to demonstrate the applicability of the framework.
Finally, the above proposed framework is modified to be applicable to systems with multiple processing units. A case study of three interacting tanks is used to explain the methodology of this framework.
Citation
Pawar, Bhushan Prasad (2023). Resilience Assessment Framework for Chemical Process Systems. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /199824.