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Process Safety Technical Areas

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...

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...

Guidelines for Process Safety in Bioprocess Manufacturing Facilities

November, 2010
This book helps advance process safety in a key area of interest. Currently, no literature exists which is solely dedicated to process safety for the bioprocessing industry. There are texts, guidelines, and standards on biosafety at the laboratory level and for industrial hygiene, but no guidelines...

Flame Flashbacks: Causes and Prevention

AIChE Webinar
Apr 7, 2010
Dan Banks, P.E.

This webinar addresses the principle of flammability of vapor/air mixtures, including flammability limits, ignition temperatures, the effect of inerts and how to determine the flammability of any particular mixture.

Condensation Induced Water Hammer: Principles and Consequences

Mar 23, 2010
Carlos A. Barrera
An explosion occurred in the boiler room of a food processing plant as the steam generation system was coming online after a maintenance shutdown. The explosion shattered the case of the condensate return pump fatally injuring an employee, while another employee was burned by the escaping steam...

Imperial Sugar Refinery Combustible Dust Explosion Investigation

Mar 23, 2010
John Vorderbrueggen
On February 7, 2008, at about 7:15 p.m., a series of sugar dust explosions at the Imperial Sugar manufacturing facility in Port Wentworth, Georgia, resulted in 14 worker fatalities. Thirty six workers were treated for serious burns and injuries—some caused permanent, life altering conditions. The...

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...

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...

An Integrated Toolkit for Addressing Human Factors Issues in Process Safety

Mar 23, 2010
David Embrey
This paper describes an integrated toolset, called the Human Factors Workbench, which addresses the proactive and reactive control of human error in process operations. It is a practical application of the tools described in the CCPS publication: ‘Guidelines for Preventing Human Error in Process...

A Framework for Human Error Analysis of Emergency Situations

Mar 23, 2010
Travis JB Deacon
Human factors play an important role in the escape, evacuation and rescue process. Human factors analysis is rooted in the concept that the frequency and consequences of human errors are related to work environment, work culture and procedures. This can be accounted for in the design of equipment,...

Evaluating Human Response to an Alarm for LOPA or Safety Studies

Mar 23, 2010
Robert J. Stack
Many LOPA scenarios have an independent protection layer (IPL) credit for operator intervention to prevent or mitigate the scenario. It is often difficult for the LOPA team or other safety teams to assess if the appropriate operator response credit is being taken. To allow a more consistent...

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...

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