Probabilistic Safety Analysis of a Plant for the Production of Nitroglycol including Start-up and Shut-down

Probabilistic safety analyses for process plants generally only address accidents occurring during production operation (cf.[1], [2]). This is in contrast with the numerous start-ups and shut-downs required in most chemical plants. For this reason an investigation is presented which covers all the three operational phases mentioned. It was performed for a plant producing nitroglycol, a very powerful explosive. The presentation is limited to the production part, although other plant areas as, for example, storage were investigated as well [3].