50th Annual Loss Prevention Symposium (LPS) | AIChE

This conference will be the 50th Anniversary of the Loss Prevention Symposium (LPS). LPS  is one of four parallel symposia that comprise The Global Congress on Process Safety (GCPS). The purpose of the LPS conference is to aid in the prevention of serious loss incidents that involve fires, explosions, runaway reactions, and major material releases in the chemical, petrochemical, and related industries.  The conference agenda will consist of eleven sessions, each with three 25-minute presentations. Papers are selected by session chairs based on an abstract of 100-200 words. The abstract must offer a brief account of the contents, conclusions, and the relevance to the topic area. Submitted abstracts must include the author, their affiliation, full address, email, and phone number. The papers will be published in the GCPS proceedings. Abstracts will need to be submitted online, by October 15, 2015.

"Technological advances in process safety, explosion prevention, fire protection, and lessons learned from incident investigations"

LPS Chair

Call for Abstracts 

Encouraged session topics for this symposia include:

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Fires, Explosions, and Reactive Chemicals

The analysis, prevention, protection and mitigation of fire and explosion hazards continue to be important to the loss prevention community. This session invites original papers that identify, characterize, or offer design and operational guidance on fire, explosion, and reactivity hazards.

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Advanced Prevention and Mitigation Techniques 

This session invites original technical papers describing novel methods to prevent, mitigate or suppress potential fire, explosion and/or toxic release events. This includes, but is not limited to, advanced preventive maintenance technologies, incipient failure detection, safety alarm management, instrumented protective systems, overpressure protection, release detection and suppression, curtains/barriers, fire/explosion suppression including for dust explosions, rapid isolation/depressurization systems and mitigative protective action and response technologies.

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Asset Integrity, Damage Mechanisms, and Condition Monitoring 

Managing asset integrity involves designing, procuring, constructing and maintaining process facilities that provide robust and reliable containment and control of process hazards over the entire facility lifetime. Damage mechanisms such as corrosion, erosion, fatigue, embrittlement, mechanical damage and operating a process outside of its integrity operating window can lead to loss-of-containment events. Other damage mechanisms affect rotating equipment, instrumentation and controls, safety systems, utilities and key facility structures. This session is an opportunity to share advances in condition monitoring techniques to detect damage mechanisms, as well as other aspects of mechanical integrity programs such as aging plants; deficiency management; critical equipment; functional testing of standby systems; and determining inspection, testing and preventative maintenance frequencies using risk-based methods.

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Combustible Dusts 

Dust explosions continue to be a too-frequent cause of human injury, facility damage, and business interruption. Addressing combustible dust safety issues requires an appropriate prevention and protection strategy involving the proper identification and assessment of the hazards and implementation of engineered and administrative controls. This session invites original papers describing advances in combustible dust hazards evaluation and control.

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Facility Siting, Consequence Analysis, and Risk Assessment 

The application of facility siting principles and computational methods continues to expand as part of project or facility risk assessment activities. This session seeks papers describing applications and recent advancements in Consequence Analysis, Facility Siting technology, and Quantitative Risk Analysis, as well as integration and application of such tools and techniques into corporate risk assessment. Papers discussing best practices, case studies, and lessons learned are encouraged.

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Advances in Open Source Process Safety Software 

The GCPS is a great example of how the process safety industry has come together in order to advance the field. Additionally, process safety professionals have used, developed, and contributed to Open Source software tools such as OpenFOAM, Fire Dynamics Simulator, and others. This session seeks papers describing applications of open source process safety software as well as recent advancements in the development of these tools.

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Case Histories

(GCPS Joint Case Histories Session on Wednesday Afternoon of the conference)

Reviews of process safety incidents provide valuable learning opportunities.  This session invites papers to help understand the causes and lessons learned from incidents in the industry with an emphasis on events that have helped define and develop the process safety field over the years. 

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