Assessment of environment-, health- and safety aspects of fine chemical processes during early design phases

Most environmental-, health- and safety problems (EHS) of a chemical process are fixed during the early stages of the design process, when the chemical reaction pathway and the reaction parameters (e.g. solvents, temperature) are selected. Although a large variety of methods exist for assessing EHS problems of existing processes, none of them can be applied as a general method during early design phases, where many parameters and substance data are still unknown. This study proposes a flexible method for identifying and semiquantifying all relevant EMS-problems of a chemical process. This method is incorporated into a largely automatised tool combining process flowsheeting programs and different environmental databases. Environmental aspects are separated from health and safety aspects. Both parts are further subdivided into different effect categories such as e.g. fire, acute toxicity or water pollution. Values representing the magnitude of an EMS-problem are calculated for each category in a transparent and clearly documented way. The results (kind, magnitude and origin of EHS-problems) can be viewed in different degrees of detail ranging from simple overall indices to detailed studies of an environmental effect. We will present the results of the application of this tool to a six step batch process of a pharmaceutical intermediate.