HSE hazard ranking of chemicals related to Petroleum Drilling Laboratory of University using Fuzzy TOPSIS.

Health, Safety, Environment (HSE) risk management in academic environment has always remained a major concern. Implementation of reliable management system that could ensure good HSE culture in universities laboratories is challenging due to diverse complications involving complex and hazardous operations and operating conditions, conduction of variety of experimentation using dangerous machines or equipment, storage, handling, usage and disposal of hazardous chemical substances and experimental waste, and the engagement of personnel having different experience and expertise level. Deployment of HSE risk management of chemicals is one of the most important risk components since the presence of chemicals in the laboratories poses severe danger to HSE even if they are not in working operation. In this research study, hazard ranking of 39 chemical products, on the basis of three criteria which include health, safety, and environment, present in the Petroleum Drilling Laboratory of Department of Petroleum Engineering of NED University of Engineering and Technology has been performed. HSE hazard performance evaluation of chemicals is conducted using popular multi-criteria decision making technique i.e. Fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (FTOPSIS). Four Experts provided rating of relative importance of criteria and criteria performance of each chemical using linguistic variable which were converted into Trapezoidal fuzzy numbers for calculations. According to the final results, Methylene chloride, benzene, and isopropanol proved to be the three most dangerous chemical products while E.D.T.A Solution was found be the least dangerous substance according to HSE hazards. Moreover, sensitivity analysis was also performed by changing the weight criteria. Acetone and algae oil ranking proved to be the most sensitive to criteria weights. The proposed methodology of this study can be used to rank chemicals in other similar laboratories and fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]