Understand Hazard & Risk

Strong acids, such as aqueous hydrochloric acid, are commonly used in the chemical process industry to purify streams or remove particulates from raw material, product, and waste streams. The benefits of HCl are its' low cost, large dissociation constant, and stability over time. However, the...

This paper is an overview of the NFPA 654 layer thickness criteria, including the 2010 TIA, and potential misinterpretations that could result in failure to recognize the hazard. Potential misinterpretations include allowing excessive floor area coverage, failure to account for layers thicker than...

Safety instrumented systems are used to reduce the risk of major accidents in the process industry. To claim a certain risk reduction from such systems, it is necessary to perform reliability analyses, within internationally accepted frameworks, such as the IEC 61511. The main factors that...

It is critical to embed Process Safety Management in the capital project system to help achieve a safe start-up. This is the foundation for assuring safe operations throughout the life of the process, especially in the construction of facilities for high process hazards. Today's PSM system,...

On Sunday 11 December 2005, a severe unconfined vapour cloud explosion followed by several tank fires occurred at the Buncefield oil storage depot in England, causing widespread damage to homes and businesses surrounding the site, hopefully without any victim. The damage caused by the resulting...

Dust explosions represent a considerable safety risk in process industry. Statistical records of dust explosions show that 32.7 % of these explosions are initiated by mechanical sparks or hot surfaces due to mechanical friction [1]. Laboratory investigations however show that direct ignition of...

Process risk is a function of both the likelihood of occurance of an incident, and of the consequences of the incident. There is a common perception that inherently safer design focuses solely on reducing or eliminating the consequences. However, inherently safer design can also focus on the...

The production of fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals has been traditionally achieved via batch processes. More recently, there has been interest in using multiscale (meso- and micro-) reactors for the production of these fine chemicals and pharmaceuticals. These efforts in process intensification...

A number of reactive processes of the agrochemical, fine-chemicals and pharmaceutical industries involve thermally unstable and/or toxic reactants, products or intermediates, for which the chemistry, thermochemistry and thermodynamic properties are barely known. They frequently employ multipurpose...

Very few measures are taken to mitigate the possible consequences of vapour cloud explosions. The main attention is given to prediction of the consequences, which is used to consider strengthening structurally or re-locate occupied buildings such as control rooms. However little is undertaken to...