Biogas Production Plants: A Methodological Approach for Occupational Health and Safety Improvement

Existing lessons on public safety, referred to as new biotech plants, suggest that the development of effective, responsive and responsible safety standard can improve the trust of the public in the new generation plants such as biorefineries. This implies the need for specific risk assessment aimed at defining the mitigation measures, which can minimize the impact of hazards on workers' health. The main hazards, referred to biogas production process, are biohazard, fires and potentially explosive atmospheres. In particular, the last two hazards strictly depend on the presence of methane in the biofuel. This chapter presents the results of a work aimed at providing the biogas industry with a practical tool, which can be used to carry out the analysis of hazards of biogas plants. The adopted method for developing the tool is based on the well-known checklist approach. The checklist is a valuable support for the plant operator to evaluate periodically the actual effectiveness of the overall safety measures and ensure a safer management of the biogas plant. The checklist can meet these requirements. This chapter reports the main preventive, protective and managerial measures, which can be adopted to decrease the hazardous outcomes on workers' health and safety.