CIVIL AND INDUSTRIAL DECOMMISSIONING + ELEMENTS OF RISK ASSESSMENT AND MANAGEMENT IN WATER AND WASTEWATER TREATMENT
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- PAOLA VERLICCHI
- Credits
- 9
- Curriculum
- AMBIENTALE
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- ICAR/03
Training objectives
- Premise
The course is split into two parts: the first one related to the decommissioning enigineering and management for both industrial and civil sites and the second one to the risk assessment in water and wastewater treatment plants with a focus on the development of Water Safety plans in waterworks.
Part A:
The aim of the course is to provide basic knowledge on decommissioning engineering and management for both industrial and civil sites.
Decommissioning activities represent nowadays an autonomous engineering discipline covering the organizational, administrative and technical aspects relevant to the temporary shut-down (mothballing) of a site for revamping, renovation, enlargement, transformation or other improvement interventions, as well as relevant to the final shut-down (closure) and the end-of-life dismantling or reconversion to other use.
Manufacturing and petrochemical plants, power stations, oil&gas rigs, buildings and civil infrastructure, pipelines, mining facilities, iron and steel works are just some of the facilities requiring great efforts in order to make them safe (to workers, to the civil population and to the environment) for further intervention and/or demolition purposes; ships represents a major-risk typology to be considered as well.
The course will mainly focus on the preliminary risk assessment of a site, on the implementation of the measures aimed at reaching a “safe for work” status and on the following demolition/deconstruction techniques; it will provide the basic elements to trace the history of the plant/building/ship and the potential critical issues associated to structural safety, hazardous materials and residual energy potential.
Mothballing procedures, recycling and reuse of recovered materials, legal requirements, decommissioning planning and design for deconstruction (DfD) philosophy will be taken in consideration as well.
Part B
The course aims to provide the students the principles of the risk assessment in managing and designing treatment plants (including wastewater and water treatment plants).
The different topics addressed in the course will be presented with the aim of favoring in the student the awareness that in designing, upgrading, revamping a plant it is important to know the main risks related to the operations and identification of the most critical (the most frequent and the most dangerous) ones could guarantee a more plant safe design/upgrade/revamp. This also means a reduction in extraordinary maintenance interventions.
The presentation and discussion of case studies will better explain strenghts and weaknesses of the main risk assessment techniques, commonly used.
Students who will have attended and passed the exam will be able to develop a risk assessment related to simple treatment plants or process industries.
In particolar they will be able to:
1) identify the most adequate methodology of risk assessment in different situations;
2) identify the most critical events;
3) identify which actions could be of priority importance in order to reduce the risk of occurrence of a specific events Prerequisites
- Basic knowledge of chemistry, physics, thermodynamics, technical drawing; a good comprehension of the English language is recommended to fully understand the suggested reference texts and the media supports that will be presented during the lessons.
Regarding the second part of the course, fundamentals of water and wastewater treatments will help in understanding the application of the different risk assessment analysis to the field of the drinking water production and wastewater treatment. Course programme
- Part A
Decommissioning engineering: history and basics concepts; industrial archaelogy and heritage; land and urban regeneration; the redevelopment of industrial districts (6 h)
The social impact: sustainable processes in decommissioning, ESIA and the stakeholder engagement; financial assurance for site closure, decommissioning and redevelopment (4 h)
Domestic and international rules, regulations and guidelines; occupational health and safety basic concepts;
Chemical, biological, physical hazards and relevant threshold exposure limits; risk assessment techniques (6 h)
Analysis of the available safety information; P&Id, safety data sheets, safety signs, etc. (1 h)
Forensic engineering; NDT and semi-destructive techniques for the assessment of hazardous materials, structural integrity and soil and underground pollution; UXO monitoring (4 h)
Risks related to toxic and explosives gases, asbestos, MMMF, POP, GHG, ODS, heavy metals, organotins, Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM) and Technically Enhanced NORM (TENORM), etc. International Ban Treaties (10 h)
Explosive atmospheres; explosion ignition sources, gas/vapours monitoring techniques (2h)
Confined Spaces: a major hazard workplace; oxygen depleted atmospheres; oxygen enriched atmospheres; gas detecting techniques (4 h)
Bulk materials warehousing and engulfment hazards (1 h)
Biohazards; sanitization techniques and pest control (1 h)
Latent energy control and discharge (1 h)
“Gas free” (“safe-for-hot-work” and “safe-for-entry”) and “permit-to-work” procedures; inerting, ventilation, purging, washing techniques (1 h)
Demolition machines and equipment; buildings demolition (overturn, crunching,, implosion, etc); industrial sites demolition (mechanical dismantling and oxygas cutting); deconstruction techniques; materials recycling and reuse; Design for Deconstruction (DfD) philosophy (4 h)
Part B:
Basic concepts: risks and hazards, Frequency, magnitude, individual risk, social risk (6 h).
Methods for risk identification (8 h)
Experience-based hazard evaluation procedures (6 h)
Predictive hazard evaluation procedures (5 h)
Risk assessment in case of a water plants, in case of a wastewater treatment plant and in case of direct reuse of reclaimed water for irrigation (12 h)
Development of risk assessemtn in the sector of the water and wastewater treatments involving students attending the course (8 h) Didactic methods
- Part A: Classroom lectures (If necessary, lessons will be carried out in streaming); videos on specific topics and case studies.
Part B: Lessons will be held in classroom, slides will be shown and discussed for the different issues covered during the course, development of a risk assessment in case of a simple plant.
Finally, if possible a seminar will be held by an expert in the sector of risk assessment application in the water sector (for instance from Istituto Superiore di Sanità, as this organisms is developing guidelines for Water Safety PLans) in order to discuss a specific case study. Learning assessment procedures
- Part A: Written open-ended/multiple-choice test; oral discussion focused on the written test exam.
Part B: the final examination is oral.
The student will demonstrate to have acquired knowledge and critically analyzed the concepts and the theory developed during the course. The examination consists of:
1. knowledge testing through questions pertinent to the program issues also including a discussion of a case study referring to risk assessment of a specific plant (max 10 points).
2 Analysis of a risk assessment technique commonly applied in the process industry sector (max 10 points)
3. Resolution of a simple case of risk assessment by means of a predictive model (max 10 points).
The score for each of the listed issues will be assigned on the basis of:
a. acquired knowledge: the student is oriented him/herself in the context of reference of the questions, responding promptly and in an appropriate manner.
b. skills- in particular processing ability (that is the ability to make connections during the discussion of a case study regarding the risk assessment for a specific situation);
c. critical skills in dealing with the discussed topics (the student demonstrates that he/she have grasped potentialities and criticisms for the different available methodologies, including their strenghts and weaknesses),
d. analysis and synthesis abilities in dealing with a topic.
The student will pass the examination if the score for each point is at least 6 out of 10. The final score will be defined as the average among the three assigned scores. Reference texts
- Part A:
Slides covering the full course will be provided.
Recommended readings:
• A.A.V.V., A Guide to the Inventory of Hazardous Materials (IHM), Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, London, 2014 (on-line free press)
• A.A.V.V., Agenti cancerogeni e mutageni, INAIL, Roma, 2015 (on-line free press)
• A.A.V.V., Il rischio biologico nel settore della bonifica dei siti contaminati, INAIL, Roma, 2013 (on-line free press)
• A.A.V.V., Il rischio chimico per i lavoratori nei siti contaminati, INAIL, Roma, 2014 (on-line free press)
• Air Liquide, Industrial and Specialty Gas Data Book, Air Liquide America, Houston, 2014 (on-line free press)
• Douet J., Industrial Heritage Re-tooled, TICCIH, Lancaster (UK), 2012
• Häring H-W, Industrial Gases Processing, Wiley-VCH, Weinheim, 2006 (on-line free press)
• Nicolucci R., Ambienti confinati: pianificazione e gestione del lavoro in ambito civile e industriale, Wolters Kluwert Italia, Milano, 2013
• Nicolucci R., Sicurezza e igiene industriale nelle attività di saldatura e ossigas, EPC, Roma, 2016
Further readings and support material will be suggested during the course.
Part B:
Slides will be provided (in advance) to the students.
In addition the following manuals and books could be useful:
CCPS, Guidelines for hazard evaluation Procedures, Wiley- Interscience, 2008, 3rd ed., ISBN 9780 471 97815 2
Crowl D:A:, Louvar JF, Chemical Process Safety. Fundamentals with Applications, Second edition. Prentice Hall PTR, 2010, ISBN 0 13 018176 5
