Process Safety

Twenty-five years later, the lessons of Piper Alpha are still relevant.

Accurate process safety information is the cornerstone of effective process safety management. Follow this three-phase approach to create and maintain an effective PSI program.

The prevalence of dust explosions in dust collection units may be due to the fact that the hazards posed by the powders handled are not fully understood or that explosion preventive and protective control measures are insufficient or absent. This...

Follow the recommendations and how-to Guidance provided by the National Fire Protection Association to safeguard against fires and explosions.

One of my favorite warm weather activities is kayaking. The river provides a respite away from crowds and electronic distractions. Daily stressors are erased by the warm sun, a light breeze, and the sound of water lapping at my boat. A recent weekend with great weather afforded the perfect opportunity to go out on the river with my husband. Earlier that week, severe storms blew through the area with significant rainfall and flash flooding. This increased the volume of water in the river, so conditions would be perfect for a fast and exciting ride. It also called for a more-mindful approach to safety hazards, like swift currents and debris in the water.

Most of us are fortunate enough to have five working senses — sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. We use these personal, internal feedback loops to perceive and understand our surroundings, which makes our senses some of our most valuable and essential safety equipment. Before the advent of optical, vibrational, and auditory sensors, the chemical process industries (CPI) depended on sensory perception to identify operational upsets or changes. Although sensing equipment is now ubiquitous in CPI facilities, we must also use our senses to collect critical safety data, rather than blindly relying on equipment to signal unsafe conditions.

Whether you own a hazardous-material treatment plant, send your wastes to one, or operate an onsite waste-processing unit, here are some pointers for dealing with the unique challenges you may face.

Railroad crossings that are not protected by gates or warning lights typically include signs to alert you of the potential for danger. Versions of the sign all have one thing in common — the reminder to stop, look, and listen. Only after stopping...

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration evaluates chemical facilities’ process safety management systems through a new national emphasis program. Follow these tips to reduce your risk of receiving citations, streamline the inspection process, and pave the way for future excellence.

Use this approach for the initial evaluation of potential reactivity hazards in storage applications.

Understand the potential dangers associated with handling and storing hydrogen, and take the appropriate precautions to mitigate the risks.

The 30-year anniversaries of two events of significance to the chemical engineering profession, particularly the process safety community, occur in November and December — the PEMEX disaster outside of Mexico City, Mexico, and the Union Carbide Corp. tragedy in Bhopal, India. These two incidents, two-and-a-half weeks apart, molded my professional career and ultimately motivated me to work for the Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) at AIChE, where our mission is to prevent such tragedies from occurring.

Verify-then-act is a practice and mindset that all engineers and personnel in the chemical process industries (CPI) should adopt. Mixing the wrong chemicals, setting temperatures or pressures outside of safe operating limits, or performing a step out of sequence can result in a range of consequences, from a bad batch or loss of production to a catastrophic incident. However, simply verifying before acting can reduce the risk of these penalties and save time, money, and lives.

In designing and operating chemical manufacturing processes, the reactivity of chemicals must be identified to avoid hazards. Calorimetry experiments combined with analytical methods provide a straightforward technique to identify these reactions...

Valuable information about unsafe conditions resides in the large alarm databases of distributed control systems and emergency shutdown systems. This overlooked and underutilized information can be analyzed to identify process near-misses and determine the probability of serious accidents.

Tracing audit findings back to the management system that allowed the failure to occur is an effective way to uncover deficiencies in an organization’s process safety management system. Follow the guidance provided in this article to apply root-cause-based auditing to your facility.

Improbable does not mean impossible. As engineers, we tend to consider improbable things that have happened, and discard or minimize the improbable things that (to our knowledge) have not happened. Many times when the question "can this occur?" has...

Culture can be defined as a collective group of shared beliefs and values that shape how we act. We think of culture as it relates to the actions and reactions of a group, company, or society. However, it can also characterize an individual — what influences how you make day-to-day decisions or handle various situations. Personal process safety culture can be assessed by observing someone’s (yours or another person’s) response to situations involving a safety violation.

Don't overlook opportunities to build more safety into a process that is already in operation.

On a recent talk radio program, Zeynep Ton, the author of the book The Good Jobs Strategy, discussed the defining factors of a good job — fair wages, predictable schedules, and opportunities for growth and success. The last element — opportunities...

Top management is often unfamiliar with the high-risk process safety decisions being made on a daily basis by plant managers. Incorporate this method into your management of change (MOC) procedure to ensure that all decisions are consistent with your organization’s risk-tolerance level.

Process safety engineering involves the use of fundamental engineering knowledge (e.g., thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, and kinetics) to develop and apply measures to prevent, mitigate, and respond to catastrophic incidents. The objective of this...

While loading and unloading operations in your tank farm may seem simple — transferring material -— these facilities may be some of the most important contributors to process safety risk in your plant. The tank farm probably contains the largest inventory of hazardous material in your plant. Operations, though simple, involve large quantities. The consequence of a loss of containment may be severe.

You cannot know when an unexpected reaction in a vessel might develop enough pressure to cause the vessel to rupture. All a large release of a flammable vapor needs in order to burn or explode is an ignition source. Never put yourself in danger by remaining in the area if this happens in your plant. Know your facility’s emergency plans, participate in drills, and know when to evacuate or shelter in a safe place.

An effective MOC system is vital to the success of any piping integrity management program. Your plant inspection group can anticipate changes in corrosion or other deterioration and change inspection schedules and procedures appropriately. Make sure your inspection group is involved in the approval process for changes that may affect the integrity of piping or other equipment.

The term safe work practices refers to the processes we use to authorize nonroutine work activities, and to control the hazards and manage the risks associated with these activities. Safe work practices often authorize work through permits, which frequently include checklists of potential hazards associated with the work. A nonroutine activity has nothing to do with how often the activity is done. Instead, it refers to activities that are not part of the normal process for converting raw materials to finished product, and not covered by the plant’s standard operating procedures for normal operations.

The worst process incident that can happen in your plant may not be the same as the highest process risk. Risk is a combination of how likely an incident is and how bad the consequences could be. The process incident in your plant with the worst consequences may be very unlikely to occur. Other less-severe incidents may be more likely, making the risk of these events higher than the incident with the worst consequences. You should be aware of all process risks in your plant, and your role in managing all of them.

Hazard identification and risk analysis (HIRA) includes all activities involved in identifying hazards in your process, understanding potential incident scenarios, identifying safeguards, and evaluating risk to people, the environment, property, and business.

Some process safety incidents have occurred because operating personnel failed to recognize that a process was not responding as expected. They attempted to keep a process in operation by deviating from standard procedures, or put themselves in danger by attempting to correct an out-of-control process condition rather than evacuating.

We may think of process safety incidents as fires, explosions, and immediate injuries from exposure to toxic, corrosive, or otherwise hazardous materials. However, major spills of hazardous materials, especially into rivers or other bodies of water, are also process safety incidents. They have the potential to impact large numbers of people, including people far away from your plant.

Whether we are talking about occupational safety or process safety, normalizing a deviation can result in unsafe practices, conditions, and operations. Getting comfortable with and accepting these deviations can cause a shift in our perception of what is safe. Why does this matter? Moving the target for safe operating limits and tolerating the higher risk s associated with doing so can ultimately lead to a catastrophic incident.

The March 2014 Beacon discussed the relationship between process safety and occupational safety, as well as the importance of both in ensuring a safe workplace. For many years, industry has used established measures of occupational safety...

While the Beacon focuses on process-related incidents, never forget that occupational safety is also important. For a safe workplace, we must have effective programs for both process and occupational safety.

A flame arrester may be installed to keep an external flame out of a tank or vessel or to ensure that a flame burning within a pipeline does not propagate to other equipment. Use the information presented here to determine what type of device is appropriate for your application.

A worker was asked to move two open-top 5-gal pails containing aqueous sodium permanganate solution from one location to another. When he picked up the pails, the contents of one of them erupted, spraying him with the solution. Sodium permanganate is a strong oxidizer, and the splashed material set the worker’s clothing on fire. His injuries required hospital treatment.

Many plants shut down or reduce operations during a holiday period. Equipment may be in a non-standard condition while processes are on hold or shut down. Even though the plant is shut down, it is likely that hazardous materials are still present in storage tanks and process vessels. Equipment that is shut down may be opened for inspection or maintenance. Some plants continue to operate during a holiday but with reduced staff, delaying less-critical activities.

Air is always all around us, and the oxygen it contains is necessary for life. But, compressed air (or any other compressed gas) contains a lot of energy and can cause major damage if a vessel or pipe fails.

The answer must be yes, or we would not have a Beacon on this subject. The centrifugal pumps in the pictures are all water pumps that exploded. The explosions did not occur because of any contamination or chemical reaction with something that was...

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha offshore oil platform disaster in the North Sea approximately 110 miles (180 km) from Aberdeen, Scotland. On July 6, 1988, a series of catastrophic explosions and fires destroyed the platform...