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Process Safety Technical Areas

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...

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...

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.

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...

Modification of Risk Using Barrier Methodology

Mar 23, 2010
Robin Pitblado
Risk assessments use frequency data mostly from generic sources, typically from the North Sea offshore environment or from process facility records mainly from Europe. As QRA's are being applied increasingly in North America and in the developing world, novel techniques are necessary to establish...

Near-Miss Management to Develop Dynamic Leading Indicators to Predict Incidents

Mar 23, 2010
Ankur Pariyani
Recent studies have shown the importance of identifying near-misses to predict the probability of accidents (Meel and Seider, 2006) – and managing them to reduce the potential of accidents (Phimister et al., 2003; Cooke and Rohleder, 2006). In this paper, new methodologies involving near-miss...

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...

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