Technical Presentations

LOPA, as a semi-quantitative analysis, often provides inconsistent results. This can be due to physical differences between units but often it is due to team's perceptual differences. Initiating event frequency evaluation using guidance tables is more consistent than consequence evaluation where...

Enabling conditions and conditional modifiers are some of the most contentious factors used in Layer of Protection Analysis. Enabling conditions are situations which must occur simultaneous with a given initiating event to allow the specific cause for a scenario to propagate to a consequence of...

The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) has designated MOC as one of the areas where metrics need to be developed. One of the issues that CCPS is concerned about is the quality of the MOCs as much as the quantity of those that have not been completed. One of the reasons is that people tend to...

Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) is a simplified chemical process risk assessment tool that is used to determine if sufficient independent protection layers are in place to meet an organization's risk tolerance criteria for a particular hazardous scenario. LOPA can determine how much additional...

Polymer Foam Boards have been widely used for individual home and general building, from roofs and/or walls down to foundation, for example. On the other hand, these Boards have significant physical hazards, because flammable blowing agent has come to be used, replacing nonflammable CFC chemicals...

A Cabot team used the ISA 84-2004 (IEC61511-1) standard to evaluate the Safety Instrumented System (SIS) for an existing fumed silica burner and made design changes to reduce the risk. Years prior to this initiative, the layers of protection review used was subjective and resulted in assigning...