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Process Safety Technical Areas

Implementation of PSM In Capital Projects

Mar 14, 2011
Charles A. Soczek
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,...

LOPA – Validating Human IPLs and Ies

Mar 14, 2011
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 (...

On the Potential of Mitigating Vapour Cloud Explosions Using Flame Inhibitors

Mar 13, 2011
Kees Van Wingerden
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...

Improvement of BLEVE Overpressure Method Using Historical Data

Mar 13, 2011
Fei Chen
The current CCPS/TNO's BLEVE (Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion) overpressure methodology is derived from that published by Baker in 1975. This methodology assumes isentropic expansion work and uses Baker's graphical method and high-explosive correlation to calculate BLVE energy and...

Safety Studies for Reformatsky Chemistry In a Meso-Scale Continuous Process System

Mar 13, 2011
Gabriel Loh
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...

Human Performance Training

Mar 13, 2011
Don D. Nguyen
Operator competency has been a major challenge for the petrochemical and refining industry for decades. In recent times, human factors are believed to be a consistent contributing cause for a lot of incidents. Current schemes used to determine an operator's competency are subjective and somewhat...

Inherently Safer Reactor Design for Complex Reactions Based On Calorimetry Studies

Mar 13, 2011
Alba Lucia Pineda
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...

The UK Experience In Managing Risks Arising From Human Error

Mar 13, 2011
David Embrey
Following the Piper Alpha incident in the North Sea, both offshore and onshore Oil and Gas operators in the UK were required under the COMAH (Control of Major Accident Hazards) regulations to submit a Safety Case setting out how the risks in their installations were to be managed. After many years...

Using LOPA for Sil Assignment: A Tale of Two Plants

Mar 13, 2011
Michael S. Schmidt
Two plants operated by the same company have ?identical? ammonium nitrate (AN) solution pump installations. Yet the LOPA teams concluded that the safety instrumented functions to protect those pumps needed different safety integrity levels (SILs). Despite the similarity of the installations, the...

Kinetic Modeling of the Reactions Involved in the T2 Explosion

Mar 13, 2011
Ronald J. Willey
The runaway reaction at the chemical preparation facility called T2 laboratories in Jacksonville, Florida on December 19, 2007 is analyzed. The approached involved estimating kinetic parameters based on temperature time traces presented in the CSB final report for ARSST (Advance Reactive System...

Modular Procedural Automation Addressing the Post Recession Skills Gap

Mar 23, 2010
Maurice J. Wilkins
A procedural operation consists of a set of tasks that are conducted in a set way time-after-time to achieve a certain goal such as starting or shutting down a unit or making a product. As demonstrated by Paul McKenzie (Bristol Myers Squibb) at the WBF NA Conference 2007 in Baltimore, it could even...

Burn Injury Caused by Mixing Incompatible Chemicals with Sodium Permanganate

Mar 23, 2010
Russell A. Ogle
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...

Elements of Human Factors Missing from Process Safety

Mar 23, 2010
Revonda Tew
Process safety is about controlling risk of failures and errors; controlling risk is primarily about reducing the risk of human error. All elements of Risk-Based Process Safety (RBPS) and alternative standards for process safety (such as US OSHA's standard for Process Safety Management [PSM] or ACC...

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