Technical Presentations

This paper discusses the investigation of an accident caused by the mixing of incompatible chemicals, a strong oxidizing agent with a reducing agent. The exact mixture and sequence of mixing was unknown, but the materials included an aqueous solution of 40% sodium permanganate (NaMnO4) and possibly...

A small specialty chemicals plant experienced an unusual power outage as the result of a lightning strike. The lightning strike damaged several of the electrical distribution systems and local controls and instrumentation systems in such a way that the extent of the damages to controls systems were...

Accident root cause investigations often may identify unplanned power outages as the cause of a catastrophic accident. Unplanned power outages can be an initiating event that leads to an emergency shutdown of a process unit. If the emergency shutdown is managed incorrectly, it can result in an...

An explosion occurred in the boiler room of a food processing plant as the steam generation system was coming online after a maintenance shutdown. The explosion shattered the case of the condensate return pump fatally injuring an employee, while another employee was burned by the escaping steam...

This paper presents approaches to provide a safer operating plant by extending mechanical integrity to all process equipment using a risk-based approach to better focus resources. Risk-based approaches for inspection and testing of fixed equipment for mechanical integrity (API 580/581) and for the...

The methodologies in the chapter on “Dispersion Modeling” in the CCPS book Guidelines for Consequence Analysis of Chemical Releases, provide means for modeling outdoors releases at relatively long distances from a large source. At times it is necessary to model releases at relatively short...