Process Safety Technical Areas

This research is focused on suggesting the methodology to find optimal placement for hazardous facilities and other process plant buildings using optimization theory and mapping risks. Incidents could have possible consequences from flammable gas release which can be predicted by PHAST, and the...

Combustible dust hazards are prevalent in many facilities throughout industry, including the chemical process industries. Lack of awareness and control of these hazards has led to numerous catastrophic accidents. Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP has developed a practical approach to identifying...

Distillation is one of the most common unit operations in the chemical processing industry. Using relative volatility as a means of separating chemicals involves adding large amounts of energy to the system at the base of the column, typically through the use of a reboiler, and then removing that...

A recent explosion occurred in a single burner, recirculating solids ring dryer. No one was reported injured as a result of the explosion, however the explosion caused significant damage to the dryer and minor damage to sections of the facility. Despite the dryer having been designed with seven...

With the increasing use of Layer of Protection Analysis as a semi-quantitative method of assessing process risk, LOPA practitioners are asked to assign credit to numerous safeguards including relief devices. Relief devices are only as strong as the initial design of the component and the systems...

Thermal insulation is used in chemical plants primarily as a tool to prevent energy loss. However, if installed properly, an added benefit is that of allowing the use of smaller relief valves when designing relief systems in the fire case. The study described in this report was initiated to...

A method for assigning solid oxidizers and products containing oxidizers to an NFPA Class was developed. The method consists of two reaction-to-fire tests: a bench-scale screening test with thirty gram piles and an intermediate-scale fire exposure test with twenty four pounds of material in...

Enabling conditions and conditional modifiers are some of the most contentious factors used in Layer of Protection Analysis. Enabling conditions are situations which must occur simultaneous with a given initiating event to allow the specific cause for a scenario to propagate to a consequence of...

Thermal stability of a chemical mixture or pure material can be evaluated using adiabatic calorimetry. Several calorimetry testing instruments and techniques will be used and compared for a comprehensive evaluation. Results from these tests can be used to determine kinetic parameters which can be...

A Cabot team used the ISA 84-2004 (IEC61511-1) standard to evaluate the Safety Instrumented System (SIS) for an existing fumed silica burner and made design changes to reduce the risk. Years prior to this initiative, the layers of protection review used was subjective and resulted in assigning...