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Elements of Process Safety

The four pillars and the twenty elements of risk based process safety can be designed and implemented at varying levels of rigor to optimize process safety management, performance, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Stability Analysis of Safety Valve

Mar 22, 2010
The stability for a safety valve was investigated by experiments and analysis. It was found that the dynamic instability was caused by the interaction effect between the pressure wave propagation through the inlet pipe and the valve disc motion. This dynamic instability is mitigated by the...

Risk-Based Mechanical Integrity - Beyond Fixed Equipment

Mar 22, 2010
Thomas J. Folk
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...

Modeling Small Releases from Tanks

Mar 22, 2010
Fredrick H. Knack
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...

Combustible Dust: A Practical Approach to Identifying and Mitigating Hazards

Mar 22, 2010
Richard C. Griffin
Combustible dust hazards are prevalent in many facilities throughout industry, including the chemical process industries. Lack of awareness and control of these hazards has led to numerous catastrophic accidents. Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has developed a practical approach to identifying...

Materials as Inherent Ignition Sources for Dust Explosions During Spray Drying

Mar 22, 2010
Vincent Van den Hoogenband
During spray drying, a solution is dispersed through a nozzle in small droplets to evaporate the water by means of hot air. In a large number of these processes, organic materials are processed so three out of four factors for dust explosions to occur are already present. The only thing missing for...

Instrumented Protective Systems for Distillation Operations

Mar 21, 2010
Jennifer Mize
Distillation is one of the most common unit operations in the chemical processing industry. Using relative volatility as a means of separating chemicals involves adding large amounts of energy to the system at the base of the column, typically through the use of a reboiler, and then removing that...

Chronic Pain Resulting from Your Relief Device Management Systems

Mar 21, 2010
David A. Moore
With the increasing use of Layer of Protection Analysis as a semi-quantitative method of assessing process risk, LOPA practitioners are asked to assign credit to numerous safeguards including relief devices. Relief devices are only as strong as the initial design of the component and the systems...

A Guide to Developing and Implementing Safety Checklists: Plant Steam Utilities

Mar 21, 2010
Delmar Morrison
Steam generation is an integral part of most chemical process plants; however, the steam plant often is or can be overlooked in the area of hazard analysis. The reasons for this oversight are obvious: steam generation is considered to be an old and well understood process, and steam boiler systems...

Assessing the Burning Rate of Solid Oxidizers

Mar 21, 2010
Elizabeth C. Buc
A method for assigning solid oxidizers and products containing oxidizers to an NFPA Class was developed. The method consists of two reaction-to-fire tests: a bench-scale screening test with thirty gram piles and an intermediate-scale fire exposure test with twenty four pounds of material in...

Training Management of Change Approvers

Mar 21, 2010
Karen Study
Many companies have made great strides in change management systems since OSHA's Process Safety Management Standard 29 CFR 1910.119 was first promulgated in 1992. This standard required “implementation of written procedures to manage changes… that affect a covered process”i. Although significant...

LOPA and Human Reliability – Human Errors and Human IPLs

Mar 21, 2010
Bill Bridges
Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) is a simplified risk assessment method that provides an order of magnitude estimate of the risk of a potential accident scenario. Humans can be the cause on an accident scenario (the Initiating Event [IE]) or human can serve as an independent protection layer (...

Fire Study of Melting Fiberglass Using FLUENT CFD Software

Mar 21, 2010
Steve G. Rochelle
Thermal insulation is used in chemical plants primarily as a tool to prevent energy loss. However, if installed properly, an added benefit is that of allowing the use of smaller relief valves when designing relief systems in the fire case. The study described in this report was initiated to...

LOPA – Going Down the Wrong Path

Mar 21, 2010
Robert F. Wasileski
Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) has quickly gained acceptance in the Chemical Processing Industries (CPI), and has risen to be one of the leading risk assessment techniques used for process safety studies. LOPA generally employs more rigor and science than what is encountered with qualitative...

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