Completely revised and updated to reflect the current IUPAC standards, this second edition is enlarged by five new chapters dealing with the assessment of energy potential, physical unit operations, emergency pressure relief, the reliability of risk reducing measures, and process safety and process development.

Clearly structured in four parts, the first provides a general introduction and presents the theoretical, methodological and experimental aspects of thermal risk assessment. Part II is devoted to desired reactions and techniques allowing reactions to be mastered on an industrial scale, while the third part deals with secondary reactions, their characterization, and techniques to avoid triggering them. Due to the inclusion of new content and restructuring measures, the technical aspects of risk reduction are highlighted in the new section that constitutes the final part.

Each chapter begins with a case history illustrating the topic in question, presenting lessons learned from the incident. Numerous examples taken from industrial practice are analyzed, and each chapter concludes with a series of exercises or case studies, allowing readers to check their understanding of the subject matter. Finally, additional control questions have been added and solutions to the exercises and problems can now be found.

Professor Francis Stoessel is Head of Chemical Process Safety Consulting in the Swissi Process Safety GmbH. After graduating in Chemical Engineering from the Universite de Haute Alsace, he spent most of his career working for Ciba-Geigy in their Chemical Engineering Department. He was Head of the Thermal Safety Department at Ciba, later of Process Safety Consulting at Novartis. He then took up a professorship at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne. Prof. Stoessel has received awards from the Swiss Expert Commission for Safety in the Chemical Industry and the Swiss Society for Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry.