CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 79, 2020 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.cetjournal.it Guest Editors: Enrico Bardone, Antonio Marzocchella, Marco Bravi Copyright © 2020, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. I SBN 978-88-95608-77-8; I SSN 2283-9216 Risk Analysis of a Supercritical Fluid Extraction Plant using a Safety Software Angela Iovine a,b , Gian P. Leone c , Vincenzo Larocca d , Giuseppe Di Sanzo d , Patrizia Casella b , Tiziana Marino a , Dino Musmarra a , Antonio Molino b,* a Department of Engineering, University of Campania “Luigi Vanvitelli”, Via Roma, 29 - 81031 Aversa, Italy b ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Territorial and Production System Sustainability Department, CR Portici Piazzale Enrico Fermi, 1 - 80055 Portici (NA), Italy c ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Department of Sustainability-CR Casaccia, Via Anguillarese 301, Rome (RM), 00123, Italy d ENEA, Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Department of Sustainability-CR ENEA Trisaia, SS Jonica 106, km 419+500, 75026 Rotondella (MT), Italy antonio.molino@enea.it The Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SFE) technology is currently used in many industrial fields thanks to the advantages that it can offer. Experimental tests are carried out for different purposes such as decaffeination of coffee/tea, extraction of aromas and herbal flavours as well as spices, extraction of fats and oils, extraction of cholesterol and extraction of alcohol from beverages. SFE plants safety is closely linked to the high pressure they operate, a condition that can lead to a risk status for plant operations and above all workers. For this reason it is necessary to adopt preventive safety measures and a risk analysis is the means that allows to define and examine hazardous scenarios in order to identify safety devices. Risk scenarios related to an extraction plant as explosions are analysed through methods based on indices determination such as the Fire and Explosion Index (F&EI), the Safety Weighted Hazard Index (SW&HI) and the Probit method. This work presents the risk analysis of a SFE plant named “Luwar” using the commercial software “Phast & Safeti” provided by the DNV GL Company. In the plant is used CO2 as extraction fluid and the process purpose is valuable compounds extraction from microalgae. The risk analysis is performed on the extraction vessel considering the plant placed inside a structure (indoor condition). The results allow to identify two risk parameters, i.e. the distance and the area within which CO 2 concentration in the air assumes a value considered unsafe for human health. On the basis of the outputs it is possible to identify the safety system to be adopted in order to limit the damage deriving from the occurrence of a risk situation. 1. Introduction Extraction technology using supercritical fluids is currently used for several purposes, such as decaffeination of coffee/tea, extraction of aromas and herbal flavours as well as spices, extraction of fats and oils, extraction of cholesterol and extraction of alcohol from beverages (Raventós et al., 2002; Sökmen et al., 2018). The advantages it offers are different, such as the possibility to make applications with organic molecules and the opportunity to obtain a product free from solvents at the end of the processes: in this way a further purification phase of the obtained compounds is not necessary. Every plant is normally associated with a risk related to accidents that could potentially happen and whose nature depends on the performed processes. For systems that use fluids in supercritical conditions the risk is associated with the pressure they operate, that is much higher than atmospheric pressure (Lucas et al., 2003), but at the same time less hazardous than other industrial processes carried out at high pressure and temperature but with an explosive atmosphere like syngas (Molino et al., 2013). This condition constitutes a risk situation for the plant and for the workers involved in the activities. Therefore, from the moment a system is designed it is necessary to provide safety measures that lower the risk that an undesired event occurs and limit the damage that could result. DOI: 10.3303/CET2079014 Paper Received: 27 August 2019; Revised: 11 November 2019; Accepted: 15 March 2020 Please cite this article as: Iovine A., Leone G.P., Larocca V., Di Sanzo G., Casella P., Marino T., Musmarra D., Molino A., 2020, Risk Analysis of a Supercritical Fluid, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 79, 79-84 DOI:10.3303/CET2079014 79