2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Process safety education in undergraduate chemical engineering programs is important not only in that it meets ABET criteria and industry expectations, but also in that it is a context where students can apply skill sets developed in coursework including thermodynamics, transport phenomena, reaction kinetics, and control. Additionally, process safety topics allow students to practice professional and ethical analysis and decision-making skills. This paper will detail the integration of process safety topics in the chemical engineering curriculum at THE INSTITUTION. The program aims to foster a culture of process safety by establishing process safety as a core value, cultivating a sense of vulnerability, and teaching students how to communicate about safety.

To establish process safety as a core value in the chemical engineering curriculum at THE INSTITUTION, process safety instruction begins in the first year “Chemical Engineering Profession” course. In this course, students learn about engineering ethics and professionalism, and through that lens are exposed to major chemical process safety incidents including the Bhopal incident and select recent incidents, cultivating a sense of vulnerability. Students begin to practice communicating about safety by complete an assignment where they research and analyze a process safety incident not discussed in class.

Further on in the curriculum, in upper division laboratory and design-oriented courses, students complete a short series of Safety and Chemical Engineering Education (SAChE) modules available free to students through the free national American Institute for Chemical Engineers (AIChE) student membership. In a senior level “Process Economics and Green Design” course, students complete a process safety unit in which they are introduced to toxic hazards, industrial health & hygiene hazards, fire & explosion hazards, reactive chemical hazards, risk identification and analysis using HAZOP (Hazard & Operability Studies) and LOPA (Layer of Protection Analysis), engineering controls and safeguards, and inherently safer design principles. At the end of this unit, students conduct a constrained HAZOP around an assigned unit operation and report out on potential hazards, and how they recommend mitigating these hazards.

In the capstone design course, instructors make connections between these concepts and applications in students’ capstone design projects. In one of the capstone project progress reports, assigned towards the middle of the process development phase, students are asked to comment on how inherently safer design principles have been incorporated into their designs, and their approach to prevent and mitigate major potential safety hazards. Later in the course, students are tasked to perform a HAZOP around an assigned unit operation (usually what the instructor considers to be the most hazardous unit operation in the process). Finally, a percentage of the grade on students’ final design reports is allocated to the students’ holistic consideration of health & safety concerns and risk considerations.

Finally, students in the chemical engineering program at THE INSTITUTION can choose to enhance their process safety education by enrolling in an elective course entitled “Chemical Process Safety Fundamentals.” This course offers students in-depth coverage of process safety topics beyond what is covered in the core course including hazard identification and evaluation, risk analysis and assessment, toxicology, fire & explosion hazards, and reactive chemical hazards. Additionally, students learn how to derive and use source and dispersion models. A large percentage (about 50%) of students in the chemical engineering major at THE INSTITUTION take advantage of this elective course.