Ranking of health and safety risks in a crude oil asphaltene quantification experiment using multiple integrated multi-criteria decision making methods

Abstract

Abstract Academic Laboratories plays a significant role during students and researchers academic life. In academic labs, students routinely performed different experiments and most often they are not aware of the experimental hazards and hence encounter accidents. Moreover, these research Labs possess complex nature because of their variety of operations, equipment and experiments, therefore, analyzing risks through conventional techniques become extremely difficult. In this research study, risks prioritization of an experiment related to asphaltene quantification in a crude oil has been carried out through four methods. Firstly, the conventional risk analysis technique Failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) is applied. For the implementation of FMEA, 44 failure scenarios/modes that could occur and can impact health and safety of researcher or students are identified. Each failure mode is assessed in terms of severity, likelihood of occurrence and detection. FMEA, similar to other studies in literature, is not able to work effectively in prioritizing the risks. Therefore, in order to overcome this limitation of FMEA, FMEA integrated with Grey Relational Analysis and Fuzzy Analytic hierarchy process method is applied and improvement in risk ranking is observed. Finally for further analysis of risks, Fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) integrated with a Fuzzy AHP is implemented and considerable improvement in risk ranking is achieved. The proposed study will help researchers to take complete precautionary measures according to the risks involved in an experiment. Moreover, this proposed model can be used and applied for other experiments performed in Academic Labs.