Process Safety Technical Areas

This session will review the leading indicator research findings drawn from analyzing a large Energy and Chemicals industry data set. The source of research includes data sets and Safety business practices spanning operating sites in over 100 countries involving some global industry leading...

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...

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...

There has been a dramatic approach in the way we are implementing process safety guidelines and standards for combustible. This is particularly true for North America where there have been devastating dust explosions occurring for the last 10 years or so. Following this, OSHA has initiated NEP,...

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...

The introduction of alternate fuel vehicles leads to new safety challenges. This is particularly relevant in the case of hydrogen vehicles, as flammable mixtures of hydrogen and air can be very dangerous. Potential hazard scenarios include gaseous or liquid hydrogen leaks, accumulation and ignition...

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...

Many accidents involve two-phase releases of hazardous chemicals into the atmosphere. Rainout results in reduced concentrations in the remaining cloud, but can also lead to extended cloud duration because of re-evaporation of the rained-out liquid. For accurate hazard assessment one must accurately...

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...