Process Safety and Environmental Protection

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PSEP aims to be the principal international journal for publication of high quality, original papers in the branches of engineering concerned with the safety of industrial processes and the protection of the environment.

Papers that deal with new developments in safety or environmental aspects, demonstrating how research results can be used in process engineering design and practice, are particularly encouraged. Experimental or theoretical research work bringing new perspectives to established principles, highlighting unsolved problems or indicating directions for future research will also be considered. The journal is especially interested in contributions that extend the boundaries of traditional engineering as well as in multidisciplinary papers.

Papers related to environmental protection must take an integrated pollution control approach, demonstrating clearly that any proposed treatment method does not simply transfer pollution from one environmental medium to another, for example, from air to water or from water to solid waste. All such papers must discuss how any treatment effluents, spent adsorbents, etc., can be treated or disposed of safely, avoiding transfer of pollution to another environmental medium.

For environmental protection, papers that are outside the scope are those that lack engineering aspects, including those that:

• use experimental techniques primarily to prepare and/or characterise various materials without considerations of process engineering design and practice;
• present primarily laboratory experiments of the effects of different parameters on behaviour of materials and pollutants (e.g. pH, temperature, mass of adsorbent, etc.) without further insights into the implications for engineering design and practice;
• focus primarily on adsorption models and curve fitting (e.g. Freundlich, Langmuir etc.); and
• contain only chemical, physical and/or thermodynamic analyses.

Core topic areas:

Risk Assessment and Reliability Engineering
• Risk assessment, risk management, consequence analysis, and uncertainty quantification.
• Supply chain risk management.
• Cyber and physical security vulnerability assessment.
• Risk assessment of hydrogen-based technologies.
• Human reliability analysis (HRA) and human-machine interface (HMI).
• Reliability predictions of integrated systems and high-temperature power electronics.
• Integrity management and reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM).

Technical Safety and Loss Prevention
• Fire and gas detection.
• Firewater systems.
• Functional safety and safety integrity levels (SIL)
• Layer of protection analysis (LOPA)
• Bowtie analysis.
• Emergency response
• HAZOP and other hazard/risk identification techniques.

Modelling
• Modelling liquid, gaseous, and two-phase releases and dispersion.
• Consequence modelling, including: fire, explosion, toxic, eco-toxic effects and projectile impacts.
• Methods, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD).
• Accident investigation and modelling.

Chemical Toxicity and Exposure Assessment
• Toxic releases and exposure assessment.
• Process plant health issues.

Process Pipelines, Storage and Security
• Process pipelines security and terrorism.
• Pipeline leak detection and measurement and corrosion assessment.
• Carbon capture and storage (CCS) and CO2 transport.

Fire and Explosion
• Fire, combustion, and explosion phenomena.
• Dust explosions.
• Fire and blast protection and survivability.

Human Factors in Design and Management
• HSE performance measurement including leading and lagging indicators.
• Human and organizational factors in safety cases.
• Human performance optimization by design.
• SIMOPS (simultaneous operations).
• Situational awareness.
• Communications and risk control systems.
• Resilience engineering.
• Technical assurance and workforce training.

Inherent Safety and Inherently Safer Design • Hazard identification
• Design and development of new processes and equipment.
• Methodologies for ranking inherent safety.
• Retrofitting inherently safer solutions and upgrading existing plant for improved safety.

Nuclear Safety
• Waste disposal.
• Design for decommissioning.
• Passively safe reactor designs.
• Nuclear reactor protective and monitoring systems.

Reaction Hazards
• Chemical thermal stability and thermal reaction hazards.
• Influence of impurities on reaction hazards.
• Development of reactivity hazard index ranking tools.
• Runaway reactions, including detection and mitigation.
• Compatibility/reactivity of chemicals involved in a chemical process.

Industrial Hazards and Safety Cases
• Major accident hazards
• ALARP and cost-benefit analysis.
• Industrial safety cases.

Incident investigations and case histories
• Case histories of incidents and lessons learned integration into design and operations.
• Technical analysis of incidents.
• Computational modelling to simulate actual incidents
• Use of incidents in training and improvement of safety performance
• Incident investigation methodologies
• Incident databases and their applications.

Air pollution prevention and treatment
• Methods and technologies for prevention and treatment of air pollution
• Air dispersion modelling
• Prediction and mitigation of air pollution incidents
• Health impacts from air pollution

Resource and waste management
• Recovery and recycling of materials and products
• Energy from waste and alternative resources
• Waste minimisation
• Waste treatment technologies
• Waste management: systems and processes for energy and material recovery and waste treatment; disposal
• Landfill and waste repository design, operation and management
• Land remediation and recovery

Water pollution prevention and treatment
• Industrial, pure and ultrapure water production
• Municipal and industrial effluent treatment
• Potable water treatment
• Sludge processing, energy recovery and disposal
• Mitigation of water pollution incidents
• Water pollution dispersion modelling
• Health impacts from water pollution

Editorial board

Editors in Chief

• Professor Adisa Azapagic
  The University of Manchester School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, Manchester, United Kingdom
• Professor Faisal Khan
  Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Editorial Board Members

Technical Safety and Loss Prevention

• Mr. Richard Gowland
  
• Mr. Mark Hailwood
  LUBW Landesanstalt für Umwelt, Messungen und Naturschutz Baden-Württenberg, Karlsruhe, Germany

Modelling

• Dr. David Worthington
  DNV GL, London, United Kingdom
• Professor Jinsong Zhao
  Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

Chemical Toxicity and Exposure Assessment

• Dr. Rouzbeh Abbassi
  Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia
• Dr. Mimi H. Hassim
  University of Technology Malaysia, Skudai, Malaysia

Fire and Explosion

• Dr. Sabrina Copelli
  University of Insubria, Varese, Italy
• Dr. Qingsheng Wang
  Texas A&M University, Texas, United States
• Dr. John Zevenbergen
  TNO Defence Safety and Security, Den Haag, Netherlands

Human Factors in Design and Management

• Ms. Helen Conlin
  Pegasus Consulting Support, Bryneglwys, Denbighshire, United Kingdom
• Dr. Laurence Cusco
  Health and Safety Laboratory, Hazard Reduction Group, Derbyshire, United Kingdom

Inherent Safety and Inherently Safer Design

• Professor David Edwards
  KBR Consulting, Surrey, United Kingdom
• Professor Jai Gupta
  Shiv Nadar University, School of Engineering, Uttar Pradesh, India
• Dr. Rajagopalan Srinivasan
  Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India

Nuclear Safety

• Professor Philip Thomas
  University of Bristol, Safety Systems Research Centre, Clifton, United Kingdom

Reaction Hazards

• Professor Rosa Nomen
  Ramon Llull University, Barcelona, Spain
• Dr. Luc Vechot
  Texas A&M University, Qatar

Risk Assessment and Reliability Engineering

• Dr. Giacomo Antonioni
  University Hospital of Bologna Sant'Orsola-Malpighi Polyclinic, Bologna, Italy
• Assoc. Professor Baoping Cai
  China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, China
• Dr. Bruno Fabiano
  Università degli Studi di Genova, Polytechnic School - Civil, Chemical and Environmental Engineering Department, Genoa, Italy
• Dr. Yehia Khalil
  YALE UNIVERSITY, New Haven, Connecticut, United States

Industrial Hazards and Safety Cases

• Dr. Alexis Pey
  Stahl Holdings BV, Spain

Incident investigations and case histories

• Dr. Ju Lynne Saw
  Health and Safety Executive Bootle Headquarters, Bootle, United Kingdom

Resource and waste management

• Dr. Stephen Burnley
  The Open University, Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
• Dr. Stephen Etheridge
  Biotrix Asia Company Limited, Bangkok, Thailand
• Professor Dominic Foo
  University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, Malaysia
• Professor Paul T. Williams
  University of Leeds, Leeds, United Kingdom
• Dr. Chunfei Wu
  Queen's University Belfast, Belfast, United Kingdom
• Professor Po Lock Yue
  Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Dept. of Chemical Engineering, Hong Kong, China

Water pollution prevention and treatment

• Dr. Maria G. Antoniou
  Cyprus University of Technology, Lemesos, Cyprus
• Dr. Damià Barceló
  Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research, Barcelona, Spain
• Dr. Christophe Bengoa
  Universitat Rovira i Virgili--Sescelades Campus, Tarragona, Spain
• Professor Guohua Chen
  Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong
• Dr. Davide Dionisi
  University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
• Dr. Pilar Fernández-Ibañez
  Ulster University, Engineering Research Institute, Ulster, United Kingdom
• Dr. Tao He
  Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
• Assoc. Professor Mu Naushad
  King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
• Professor Ho Kyong Shon
  University of Technology Sydney, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Broadway, New South Wales, Australia
• Assoc. Professor Yiu Fai Tsang
  The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
• Professor Bart Van der Bruggen
  KU Leuven, Dept. of Chemische Ingenieurstechnieken, Heverlee, Belgium
• Dr. Qilin Wang
  University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, Australia
• Dr. Ruiyang (Ray) Xiao
  Central South University, Changsha, China
• Dr. Chang-Ping Yu
  National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

Air pollution prevention and treatment

• Dr. Yangxian Liu
  Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
• Professor Jaya Narayan Sahu
  University of Stuttgart, Stuttgart, Germany
• Professor Mehran Rezaei
  Iran University of Science and Technology, Tehran, Iran, Islamic Republic of