During firefighting, wear self-contained breathing apparatus with full face piece and full protective clothing. If contact occurs with material or its solutions, immediately flush with water and remove contaminated clothing.
Dust can form explosive mixtures with air. Irritating and highly toxic gases may be generated by thermal decomposition or combustion in a fire.
5.3.3 Accidental Release Measure
This section covers personal and environmental precautions in case of spills or accidental losses.
It should describe the dangers related to the substance or product Special attention should be paid to facts which are not obvious at first sight, like danger of slipping, ignition of combustible air gas mixtures which spread on the floor etc.
Instructions for cleaning up or picking up spilt product should be provided. Below are some guidelines:
1. Personal precautions
Wear self-contained breathing apparatus with full facepiece and full protective clothing. If contact occurs with material or its solutions, immediately flush with water and remove contaminated clothing.
Use proper personal protective equipment during clean up. Ventilate area and avoid creating dusty conditions.
2. Environmental precautions
Sweep up dry powder and dispose properly.
Do not let the products get into the drains.
3. Spills or leakage
Clean up spills immediately, observing precautions in the Protective Equipment section.
Sweep up, then place into a suitable container for disposal. Avoid generating dusty conditions. Provide ventilation.
4. Methods for containment and clean up
Gather the disposed material without creating dust.
Store in closed containers that are appropriate for disposal.
5.3.4 Exposure Controls/ Personal Protection
The main objective of PPE is to ensure the proper selection, use, and care of PPE through work area hazard assessments and appropriate employee training. The primary methods for preventing employee exposure to hazardous materials are engineering and administrative controls. Where these control methods are not appropriate or sufficient to control the hazard, personal protective equipment (PPE) is required.
A work area assessment is required to determine the potential hazards and select the appropriate PPE for adequate protection. Employees must receive training which includes the proper PPE for their job, when this PPE must be worn, how to wear, adjust, maintain, and discard this equipment, and the limitations of the PPE. All training must be documented.
1. Engineering control
Provide adequate ventilation to minimize dust and/or vapour concentrations.
2. Personal protective equipment (PPE)
Personal protective equipment
Dust protection, it is better to wear dust mask with filter type P3, N100
In case of dust production, use dustproof clothing and protective goggles
Hand protection
Use protective gloves to cover your hands from hazardous chemicals and to prevent spilage on your skin.
Eye protection
In case of dust production, it is better to use protective goggles.
5.3.5 Disposal Considerations
For waste treatment method, first collect all waste in suitable and labelled containers and dispose according to local legislation. It is recommended the materials and its container must be disposed of in a safe way and as per local legislation. The waste is not considered hazardous under US RCRA regulations.
5.3.6 Emergency Response Plan (ERP)
Emergency Response Plan (ERP) comprehends planning and activities that are necessary to prepare people and organization to respond to emergencies and disaster.
These activities seek to facilitate the response to save lives, minimize damage to property in the event of emergency. Emergency Action Plan describes the initial responsibilities and actions to be taken to protect all employees until the appropriate responders take over.
ERP should outline the basic of the preparation steps needed in order to handle the emergencies at plant. Emergency plan are not meant to be comprehensive but they should provide appropriate guidance on what to do in an emergency. For example, a sound disaster response plan should include:
Clear written policies that designate a chain of command, listing names and job titles of the people (or departments) that are responsible for making decisions, monitoring response actions and recovering back to normal operations.
Names of those who are responsible for assessing the degree of risk to life and property and who should be notified for various types of emergencies.
Specific instructions for shutting down equipment and production processes and stopping business activities.
Facility evacuation procedures, including a designated meeting site outside the facility and a process to account for all employees after an evacuation.
Procedures for employees who are responsible for shutting down critical operations before they evacuate facility.
Specific training and practice schedules and equipment requirements for emploryees who are responsible rescue operations, medical duties, hazardous responses, fire fighting and other responses specific to your work site.
The prefferred means of reporting fires and other emergencies.
ERPs are also the law. The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA) requires facilities with over 10 employees to have written emergency plan: in smaller
facilities, the plan can be communicated orally. But whatever the size or type of the organization, top management support and the involvement of all employees are essential.
5.4 Environmental impact assessment
For the environmental performance of the refinery the full production system is assed.
The following impact categories are taken into account for environmental analysis. This environmental impact assessment ais performed to obtain a first idea of the benefits of biorefineries in that area.
Abiotic resource depletion potential (ADP)
Global warming potential (GWP)
Ozone layer depletion potential (ODP)
Photochemical oxidation potential (POCP)
Human toxity potential (HTP)
Eco-toxity potential (ETP)
Acidation potential (AP)
Eutrophication potential (EP) 5.4.1 Comparison of eco-efficiency
The lower eco-efficiency values represent better performance of th system. In the biorefinery, a large faction of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by the ethanol fermentation process is fixed by acid fermentation thus give better performance in global warming potential (GWP) compared with gasoline refinery. This shows that the combined production of ethanol and succinic acid is indeed a more promising option. The reason why the eco-efficiency of the ethanol palnt is significantly worse than that of the gasoline refinery is the contribution of agriculture realted emissions to the total, which is significantand does not occur in the gasoline refinery.
The eco-efficiencies of the biorefinery and ethanol plant are better than one of gasoline refinery in the abiotic resource depletion potential (ADP) and ozone layer depletion potential (ODP). This is obviously due to the replacement of fossil resources by renewables where crude oil, natural gas and coal are the main contributors to abiotics resource depletion, while ozone layer depletion potentiallevel is mainly contributed by emissions from the crude oil production
In the rest of the impact categories, biorefining performs worse than gasoline refinery. In the biorefinery and ethanol plant, although emissions causing photochemical oxidation potential (POCP) from natural gas production and oil exploitation decreses, the ones from ethanol production contribute even more photochemical oxidation potential (POCP) level.
In most of the impact categories the biorefinery has a better eco-efficiency than ethanol plant, which is attributed to the high-value of the succinicacid derived from such a refinery.
The biorefinery designed in this study has clear advantages over the ethanol plant in terms of eco-efficiency. However, when comparing biorefining to gasoline refinery, the overall evaluation of the eco-efficiency depends on the importance attached to each impact category.