Optimal plant layout considering the safety instrumented system design for hazardous equipment

The safety of the process plant depends on the adequate separation between the assets and the hazardous units, along with the installation of protection devices. Several mathematical approaches have been proposed to reduce the risk of the explosions through the solution of the facility layout problem, but no model has included the design of the safety instrument systems. In this work, a MINLP approach was developed to solve three issues at the same time: the process equipment layout, the facility layout, and the safety instrumented system design. This approach aims to find the optimal facility layout that minimizes the land cost, the pipeline cost, and the lifecycle cost of each safety instrumented system, reducing the risk of explosions and keeping safety as much as possible the plant assets. The model was applied to find the optimal facility layout of ethylene oxide plant for different tolerable risk frequencies. In this way, this approach provides valuable information during the design stage and substantial support for decision-makers. (C) 2019 Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.