Operability and Safety Considerations in Process Intensification

The importance of considering operability, control, and safety criteria in the analysis and design of process intensification configurations is discussed in this paper. We first rigorously analyze the loss of degrees of freedom and role of constraints in intensified systems comparing with their conventional process counterparts. A comparison study on inherent safety metrics in reactive distillation process is then presented to stress the need for new safety metrics at early design stage. To address these operability and safety challenges, we highlight a framework for systematic integration of operability, safety, and control to synthesize operable process intensification systems.