Inherent Safety Analysis and Sustainability Evaluation of a Vaccine Production Topology in North-East Colombia

Abstract

Influenza is a respiratory disease that may cause severe consequences to human health. Influenza caused between 99,000 and 200,000 deaths worldwide in 2019. Studies have reported the presence of this virus in Santander, Colombia, a region with a high humanitarian flow. An influenza vaccine production plant topology has been proposed previously. Nevertheless, the inherent safety and sustainably behavior of this topology is unknown. Process safety plays a crucial role in the evaluation of emerging technologies since it allows the identification of potential risks. Moreover, the current sustainability policies enforce the assessment of processes considering economic, social, and environmental aspects. For this reason, a safety and sustainability evaluation of a vaccine production topology is performed in this work. The inherent safety index (ISI) methodology was implemented to analyze the process. The sustainability evaluation was performed using the sustainability weighted return on investment metric (SWROIM), in which return on investment (ROI), output potential environmental impact (PEI output), total safety inherent index (ITI), and exergy efficiency were considered. The results showed that influenza vaccine production is inherently safe since the total inherent safety index was 11. The destroyed exergy was 378.69 MJ/h, the return on investment was 86%, and the SWROIM was estimated at 81%, which means slightly negative impacts on sustainability.