Assessment of Inherently Safer Alternatives in Biogas Production and Upgrading

Biogas is becoming an increasingly important resource of energy production from biomass, and a number of alternative technologies are proposed for its production and upgrading. However, in spite of the increasing number of accidents recorded, scarce attention was dedicated to date to the control and mitigation of biogas hazards. In this study, inherent safety of biogas technologies was addressed. A method for the selection of inherently safer alternatives during early design stages was further developed and combined to a Monte Carlo sensitivity analysis, accounting for uncertainty of input parameters and addressing the robustness of the ranking provided. The method was applied to the assessment of several alternative reference process schemes for biogas production and upgrading. The results allowed the identification of critical safety issues and the ranking of inherently safer solutions. © 2016 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 2713–2727, 2016