Safety in chemical plants is paramount. Disasters such as Flixborough and Bhopal could have been prevented if Process Safety Measurement regulations were put in place and adhered to by the plants’ staff. Part of the process involves identifying hazards and eliminating them or better yet, preventing these hazards from occurring.

It is with these in mind that Safe Furnace was developed. This courseware, targeted at undergraduate and postgraduate Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering students, aims to simulate the process of identifying hazards, evaluating them and performing a risk assessment.

The web-based Safe Furnace courseware allows groups of students to identify various factors which may contribute to hazards in a chemical plant, part of the Hazard & Operability (HAZOP) analysis. The students can view the Process Description & Flow Diagram, Incident Reports and Materials Safety Data Sheets to help them in their decision making. In order to facilitate this, each potential hazard can be discussed within a group in an attached forum. From the discussions, the students will come up with a report on the resulting checklist and HAZOP study.