Safety Checklist for University Senior Design Project
The “Senior Design Project” is one of the most important aspects of an undergraduate chemical engineer’s education, because it brings together everything the student has learned in their academic career in one “real-life” exercise. By successfully completing the Senior Design Project, students demonstrate that they are ready to take on the challenges of a chemical engineering career. Senior designs are evaluated based on how chemical engineering principles are integrated with economics, quality, environmental impact, and safety. As in real life, there is rarely a single optimal or correct answer. Instead, judicious trade-offs and compromises must be balanced with creative solutions, which recognize and respect boundaries that must not be crossed.
Process safety is one boundary that should not be crossed. If this is done, a significant incident could occur in a plant built based on the design, injuring workers and the public, or destroying the plant.
To assist students involved in Senior Design Projects in identifying key process safety issues to address, CCPS and its Safety in Chemical Engineering Education Project offers a checklist of items to consider by clicking here (Link pending). Caution: This checklist is significantly abbreviated, and should not be used for designs intended for actual plant use. For a more detailed treatment for industrial purposes, please see “Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, 2nd edition.”