Safety study in a supercritical extraction plant

Abstract

This work presents a safety study of a supercritical extraction plant. In order to define process equipment and operation conditions, a supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) plant to produce 336 kg/d (60t/season) sweet pepper oleoresin is presented. The plant was designed to operate at 40MPa extraction pressure, 40°C extraction temperature, and 6MPa separation pressure using 10000Kg/h CO2 as solvent. A formal analysis was carried out in order to identify the most important hazards. It is obvious that the dangers arising from this plant have much to do with the nature of the substances being processed, the way they are treated in the plant, and their tendency to take part in chemical reactions under these conditions. The basic procedure involved was first to identify the main types and sources of hazards (possibility of releases, fires, explosions, and operation of high-pressure systems) and quantify the causes and effects. Standardized test methods were used for this. The work included representative tests such as Dow index and a detailed PROBIT analysis.