Optimizing Facility Siting and Layout through Mapping Risk Estimates on Plant Area and Monetizing

This research is focused on suggesting the methodology to find optimal placement for hazardous facilities and other process plant buildings using optimization theory and mapping risks. Incidents could have possible consequences from flammable gas release which can be predicted by PHAST, and the probability of each can be derived from initial leak hole size estimation through event tree analysis. The given land is divided in a square grid of which the sides have a certain size and in which each square acquires a risk-score. In order to get financial risk, these risk-scores are combined with weighing factor depending on type of structure and price of potential building cost. The overall cost is suggested as a function of piping cost or management cost, land cost, and financial risk. The proposed approach uses a mixed integer linear optimization problem (MILP) that identifies attractive locations by minimizing the overall cost. Case studies are carried out for different production plants planned in a certain province by taking account of real meteorological data of the area in order to show the applicability of the proposed method. The study will be useful in assisting the selection of location for process plant buildings and risks management.