Valeria Casson Moreno

Università di Pisa | UNIPI · Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering

Industrial sites processing and storing hazardous chemicals can be attractive targets of malicious acts of interference. The consequences of successful intentional attacks to chemical facilities can be severe and could escalate generating domino effects, potentially affecting people and the environment. Moreover, intentional attacks have a dynamic...

Natech accidents have an increasing relevance due to the growing number of such events and to their severe consequences. Climate change and global warming are intensifying the occurrence and the magnitude of climate-related natural events, further increasing the risk of cascading sequences triggered by natural disasters impacting industrial install...

The actual energy transition calls for the highest ever engagement of institutions and private sectors in the adoption of renewable energy systems in order to decarbonize all production chains. The high potential of renewable energy sources (RESs) in several locations worldwide is looked at as an important opportunity to both limit the energy suppl...

Over the last twenty years, physical security threats to chemical and process facilities became more and more relevant all around the world. Intentional attacks have the potential to trigger severe escalation scenarios. However, in literature there is not a comprehensive and consolidated approach to account for the effect of physical protection sys...

Alkyl levulinates such as n-butyl levulinate (BL) can play an important role in the fuel sector. Classically, BL is produced from the esterification of levulinic acid, but the butanolysis (or alcoholysis) of sugars requires less stages. The industrialization of this process requires the development of process flow diagrams and thus the knowledge of...

When processing lignocellulosic biomass materials to obtain platform molecules such as levulinic acid (LA), alkyl levulinates or γ-valerolactone (GVL), the choice of solvent is of prime importance for kinetics. The knowledge of relationships between reaction kinetics and solvent serves as a decision tool for process design. To determine such relati...

The use of alkyl levulinates is growing interest in fuels. Adding n-butyl levulinate (BL) to fuels presents some benefits compared to ethyl levulinate. The conventional production route of BL is from the esterification of levulinic acid, but the latter compound presents some corrosion issues. Alcoholysis of fructose by butanol over cation exchange...

Biodiesel is an emerging green fuel that is finding increasing applications. The further improvement of the sustainability of biodiesel production processes is a key element in the energy transition scenario. Among the social pillars of sustainability, safety is a specific requirement. However, several major accidents were experienced in biodiesel...

Technological accidents can be triggered by the impact of natural events on industrial areas. Recent studies highlight the problem and the need to assess possible damage to process pipelines involved in flooding scenarios. The present study proposes for the first time a vulnerability model for this equipment category impacted by floods and suitable...

The production of platform molecules from the valorization of lignocellulosic biomass is increasing. Among these plateform molecules, γ-valerolactone (GVL) is a promising one and could be used for different industrial applications. This molecule is synthesized from levulinic acid (LA) or alkyl levulinates (AL) through a tandem hydrogenation/cycliza...

The use of hydrogen peroxide as an oxidizing agent becomes increasingly important in chemistry. The example of vegetable oil epoxidation is an excellent illustration of the potential of such an agent. This reaction is traditionally performed by Prileschajew oxidation, i.e., by the in situ production of percarboxylic acids. Drawbacks of this approac...

The present paper aims at verifying the awareness and preparedness of urban and local planners to cope with NaTech risk, together with the availability of dedicated tools. Since most of the natural events that can trigger technological hazards are influenced by climate change (i.e. flood, heavy rains, storms, etc.), NaTech risk is expected to be st...

The Canary Islands are still largely dependent on expensive imported fossil fuels, are stressed by the increasing touristic impact and are extremely vulnerable to climate change due to water scarcity. Water desalinisation is an energy-demanding process and is essential to the sustainable development of these islands. The aim of this study is to exp...

Industrial infrastructures, in particular those where hazardous substances are stored or handled, may be the target of malicious acts aiming at the disruption of normal operations. In the present study a toolbox of complementary and synergic techniques (Correspondence Analysis (CA), Fishbone Diagrams, Cause-Consequence Chains, Reference Adversary S...

With more than 350 GWh per year and thousands of installations around the world, biogas is an appealing strategy in the field of energy production and industrial waste optimization. In this sense, it is of paramount importance to address the risk associated with such plants, as an increasing trend of accidents have been recorded in the last 20 year...

Against a backdrop of rapidly increasing worldwide population and growing energy demand, the development of technologies for the exploitation of renewable energy has become of primary importance in the effort to reduce greenhouse gases emissions. The chemical conversion of renewable power into synthetic liquid fuels, as methanol, allows an easier s...

Natural events triggering technological scenarios (Natech events) are an increasing concern for regulatory authorities and industry, in particular in areas prone to natural disasters. A comprehensive analysis of the occurrence of Natech scenarios affecting the process industry is presented. A dataset of 9100 past accidents that took place in the la...

The use of lignocellulosic biomass in the chemical industry has increased due to its non-competition with the food sector. Several platform molecules can be produced from this biomass. Among them, levulinic acid and its esters have been produced on an industrial scale. There are some reviews on the production of levulinic acid (LA) but few on the p...

The use of lignocellulosic biomass in the chemical industry can significantly contribute to respect the various international agreements on climate change. One of the most promising platform molecules issued from the lignocellulosic biomass hydrolysis is γ-valerolactone (GVL). GVL can be upgraded to valuable chemicals and produced by the hydrogenat...

The development and design of innovative biomass waste to energy conversion processes is a key issue to pursue the implementation of circular economy and to endorse a sustainable management of agricultural land. Assessing the environmental and economic sustainability of such processes is of paramount importance to prevent the trade-off of their imp...

Biomass valorization to chemicals, biofuels or materials will be more and more important during this century. Production of γ-valerolactone (GVL) from the hydrogenation of levulinic acid is a good illustration of this tendency. GVL can also be produced from alkyl levulinates hydrogenation. Can we find a relationship between the structure and the ki...

Hurricane Harvey was one of the most severe tropical cyclones hitting United States in recent years. The number of weather and climate related natural disaster and the cost of the related damages are sharply growing in recent years, also causing an increasing concern with respect to NaTech scenarios (technological accidents triggered by natural eve...

The number of biodiesel production plants is rapidly growing around the world, and the related “green” technologies are developing to full industrial scale within a brief time. The exploitation of these relatively new technologies with a low operational experience is however leading to an increase in the number of accidents in this industrial secto...

The rapid progress of innovative biorefinery technologies raises the issue of emerging risk and major accident hazard in biorefineries, as process safety aspects of such technologies are not developing at the same pace with respect to their dissemination and scale-up. To address such problem, in the present work a consequence-based approach was in...

Maximum temperature of reactant mixt ure is an important parameter regarding reactor safety. If the control of reaction temperature is lost, then side or decomposition reactions may be triggered leading to thermal runaway situation. This study concerns a liquid phase reaction system. This paper explores the influence of parameters on the thermal...

One of the most common but promising processes for the production of paints and coatings is the free radical emulsion polymerization reaction involving different types of monomers. As it is also demonstrated by statistics concerning accidents in chemical industries, polymerizations are one of the most frequent causes of thermal runaway; therefore s...

A thermal risk assessment for the hydrogenation of levulinic acid to gamma-valerolactone by using Ru/C has been performed. For that, a kinetic model was built under adiabatic condition by using Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool (ARSST). By using the estimated rate constants and the reaction enthalpies, the safety parameters: Time to maximum...

In recent years bioprocesses are becoming a cornerstone of the production industry and have been implemented for large scale production. Despite its importance, the safety of such processes has not been yet systematically analyzed and studied. The hazards of biotechnological processes entail both conventional chemical process hazards and biohazards...

Security threats are becoming an increasing concern for chemical sites and related infrastructures where relevant quantities of hazardous materials are processed, stored or transported. In the present study, security related events that affected chemical and process sites, and related infrastructures, were investigated. The aim of the study is to f...

Most of industrial activities imply operations such as process, transport, and storage of materials and chemicals whose use exposes human beings, environment, and properties to a risk due to their: Intrinsically hazardous properties, e.g., flammability/explosivity, acute and chronic toxicity, carcinogenicity, mutagenicity, teratogenicity, aquatic t...

The development of processes and technologies for the production of energy and chemicals from renewable sources is increasing worldwide [1]. Processes using biomass as a raw material are usually perceived as safer or even completely harmless than the ones using petroleum-derived products. However, processing of such raw materials requires several t...

Biogas production is growing worldwide. At European level, biogas is among the renewable energy sources whose exploitation is progressing more. Important investments are planned in biogas upgrading facilities for the production of biomethane. The relevant increase in biogas production raises emerging risk issues associated to biogas facilities. In...

The interest in the epoxidation of vegetable oils is constantly growing in the chemical industry. The most common process is based on the oxidation of the unsaturated bonds by peroxyacids generated in situ, in the water phase, using concentrated hydrogen peroxide and the corresponding organic acid in presence of a mineral acid as catalyst. The over...

Hazard identification is the first step of quantitative risk analysis and risk assessment. In the present module, starting from its definition, hazard identification has been presented and a complete synopsis of hazard identification techniques has been proposed. Comparative methods, fundamentals methods, and failure logic methods have been synthet...

Highly reactive substances might undergo undesired exothermic (runaway) reactions during transport, storage, or their chemical process. Major accidents may be triggered by this loss of thermal control in the system. Therefore, process safety issues related to chemical reaction hazards need to be systematically recognized and classified. The existin...

In the formulation of acrylic coatings, monomer blends are required to cure in situ using a peroxide initiator. Curing accelerators (typically alkyl anilines) are added to the blend in order to initiate the curing process at room temperature. This was proved to cause a process safety issue related to the presence of accelerators that increase the p...

A method for dynamic risk assessment of thermal hazards due to runaway reactions is described by means of a tutorial and implemented to study the thermal decomposition of an organic peroxide. The analysis is based on an adiabatic experiment, providing data that can closely predict large-scale behavior. The experimental equipment used allows online...

Low thermal inertia experiments in the open cell configuration were carried out to perform a comprehensive sensitivity analysis of the parameters affecting the runaway self-decomposition of Dicumyl Peroxide (DCP).This study facilitates a better understanding on howconcentration, initial back pressure, and fill level influence DCP runaway severity....

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 the present stud...

In the present paper, a methodology for the determination of inherent safety distances for escalation and layout optimization has been introduced. A survey of past domino accidents triggered by thermal explosions have been carried out and analysed with the aim of a deeper understanding of the possible primary scenarios and related escalation vector...

The present work focuses on process safety related to bioprocess engineering, meant as the integration between chemical engineering and biotechnology. A specific checklist has been created in order to perform a first step in bioprocesses hazard identification aimed at meeting not only personnel safety issues, but also process safety ones. The biopr...

In the present paper, a methodology for the self-assessment of health and safety management of a company was applied to biogas industry. The goal of this study was to depict a synthetic evaluation of the existing management system through the quantification of different key elements. Among them, the most interesting ones for the case under analysis...

In the last 10 years biogas production tripled, resulting in an increasing number of related facilities. The present study addresses safety issues of such activity on the basis of past accident analysis. A database of accidents related to biogas supply chain was created and data on 169 accidents were collected from different literature sources. Tre...

The behavior of Dicumyl peroxide (DCP) under runaway conditions was studied using low and high phi factor (φ) calorimeters. Solutions of 20, 30 and 40%, by weight, of DCP in 2,2,4-trimethyl-1,3-pentanediol diisobutyrate and cumene were run at different phi factors experiments(1.8 > φ > 1.1). The results depicted that cumene reduces the severity of...

Some recent accidents involving the bioenergy production and feedstock supply chain raised concern on the safety of such technologies. A survey of major accidents related to the production of bioenergy (intended as biomass, bioliquids/biofuels and biogas) was carried out, and a data repository was built, based on past accident reports available in...

The prediction of the consequences of a runaway reaction in terms of temperature and pressure evolution in a reactor requires the knowledge of the reaction kinetics, thermodynamics and fluid dynamics inside the vessel during venting. Such phenomena and their interaction are complex and yet to be fully understood, especially reactions where the pres...

In the present work, the risk assessment of a biogas production and upgrading plant, representative of most of the biogas sites widespread throughout Europe, was carried out. The biogas is produced by anaerobic digestion for heat and power generation. An upgrading section (based on membrane technology) was also considered, for the production of bio...

Many industrial accidents in the recent past showed that the thermal decomposition of Cumene Hydroperoxide (CHP) can lead to runaway reactions and subsequent fires and explosions. Still this organic peroxide is extensively used in the petrochemical industry. This paper is aimed at a better understanding of the possible consequences of CHP decomposi...

History has shown at multiple occasions that major incidents in the process industry have the potential to affect the world in different aspects: loss of life and economic losses and environmental disasters. Can the occurrence of major preventable incidents be seriously decreased by investing in better education and research in process safety? This...

This paper analyzes the effect of an accelerator on the polymerisation of methyl methacrylate (MMA). This study is based on the results of an investigation of an accident in a manufacturing site for resins located in the United Kingdom. As sequence of event to cause the accident the following was assumed: during an unattended batch process a runawa...

This work is the result of the experimental analysis of the effect of different alkyl anilines (accelerators) on the self-polymerisation of methyl methacrylate. The state of the art before this study suggested that there should have been no significant increase in the rate of polymerisation reaction until the initiator (typically a peroxide) is add...

We report here on a novel approach for the early runaway detection in chemical reactors, based on the integration of two kinds of sensors: i) a set of three Pt thermo-resistances for measuring the temperatures both within the reactor and in the cooling jacket and ii) an UV-visible probe for the indirect evaluation of the conversion through measurem...

The use of different calorimetric techniques for process design and scale up is well consolidated, allowing the definition of the kinetic and thermodynamic of the process and the evaluation of several parameters useful to optimization and process safety. During a calorimetric analysis temperature (or a temperature difference) is measured; from expe...

Chemical reactors carrying on exothermic processes may undergo to runaway reactions. To prevent from this hazard, Early Warning Detection Systems (EWDSs) can be used in industry, because they allow the on-line detection at an early stage of the runaway. The stability criterion of Hub and Jones is frequently implemented in EWDSs. Despite its simplic...

In this study, the analysis of the decomposition of four different peroxides (including hydrogen peroxide) by screening calorimetry is proposed. The objective is to analyze the decomposition reactions and evaluate the consequences in particular when the process undergoes to thermal explosion and may be the cause of incidents. Screening calorimetry...

In a study of Nolan and Barton in 1987 it was already underlined that process safety is primarily based on an accurate and detailed knowledge of the thermo-chemistry of the reaction and afterwards on a correct scale up and management. In this work the experimental analysis of hydrogen peroxide decomposition is proposed by the use of a modified pseu...

In this work the analysis of an accident in transport of dangerous goods is proposed. The objective of this study is to contribute to the determination of the causes that brought about the self-polymerization of commercial divinylbenzene (DVB 63%) contained in an iso-container, in order to prevent this accident to happen in the future. Time and con...

In this work the analysis of an incident in transport of dangerous goods is proposed. The objective of this study is to contribute to the determination of the causes that brought about the self-polymerization of commercial divinylbenzene (DVB 63%) contained in an isothermal container, in order to prevent this incident from happening in the future....

In this study the analysis of di-tert-butyl peroxide decomposition in different organic solvents by screening calorimetry is proposed. Organic peroxides are liable to decompose exothermically at normal or high temperatures. The type of solvent changes the effects in the runaway behavior. Screening calorimetry data allow us to define the conditions...