Process Safety Technical Areas

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 (...

The best time to apply the principles of inherent safety is during the early stages of a design. In particular it is at the early stages that the ?Eliminate? option is best applied. For example, in the early stages of one design the process engineers had come up with a system of three knockout...

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...

The Abnormal Situation Management® Consortium funded a study to investigate common failure modes and root causes associated with operations practices. The study team analyzed 20 public and 12 private incidents for common operations practice failure modes including the BP Texas City Incident. A key...

The "generic" standard for preventing fires and explosions involving combustible dusts is the National Fire Protection Association publication NFPA 654. In this document, fifteen of the requirements are prefaced with the phrase "if an explosion hazard exists", and an additional four requirements...

Making process plants inherently safer has obvious advantages and is easiest to do when designing a new plant. Modification of existing plants to make them inherently safer can often be much more difficult and costly, including any costs due to lost production. However, an inherently safer design...

People have inherent strengths and weaknesses which can affect their performance. Issues such as fatigue, emotional stress, and motivation can adversely affect performance. Their performance is also influenced by factors external to the individual, such as poor equipment design, inadequate training...

Dust explosions are frequent and particularly devastating in the process industries, and secondary dust explosions are the most severe ones. A secondary dust explosion can occur when the blast wave from a primary explosion entrains dust layers present in the plant, creating a large dust-air...

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) is an independent, nonregulatory federal organization in the United States dedicated to investigating serious accidents in the chemical industry. Accidents are investigated by a team of CSB employees and from the evidence collected a list of...

Fundamental changes in a chemical process are most cost-effective at early stages of a design, and specific Inherently Safer Design evaluations are frequently performed at these early stages to identify fundamental improvements that can signicantly decrease the magnitude of the consequences...