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Process Safety Boot Camp

Instructor-led (classroom) Course
This intensive 4-day course is also offered periodically throughout the year to the broader chemical engineering public. Taught jointly by process safety veterans with decades of experience at major companies from the process industries, the course is highly interactive.Read more

Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS)

CCPS was established in 1985 to focus on engineering and management practices that can prevent and mitigate catastrophic accidents involving release of hazardous materials. CCPS is supported by sponsors in the chemical and hydrocarbon process industries and active worldwide via conferences, books, databases, education, research, and more.

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Using LOPA to Establish SILs for Power Outage Protection

Apr 4, 2012
Carlos A. Barrera
Catastrophic incident root causes often may be correlated with power outages. An unanticipated power outage may be an initiating event that leads to a process upset or even an emergency shutdown of a process unit. If the planning and implementation of the emergency shutdown are managed incorrectly...

Fatal Exposure: Tragedy At DuPont

Apr 4, 2012
Marc G. Sáenz
This investigation by the United States Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB) provides unique lessons in process safety. Three incidents occurred over a 33-hour period at the DuPont plant in Belle, WV. The most serious incident occurred on January 23, 2010, when a release of highly...

Evaluation of Dispersion Models for LNG Siting Applications

Apr 4, 2012
Andrew Kohout
The federal safety standards for LNG facilities under 49 CFR Part 193 approves the use of specific dispersion models for performing vapor-gas dispersion exclusion zones. In addition, provisions allow for the use of alternative models if approved by PHMSA. In 2010, PHMSA, in consultation with FERC,...

Acetylene Converter Safety Systems

Apr 4, 2012
Nelson Shen
Acetylene is produced as a by-product during the pyrolysis cracking of hydrocarbons in ethylene plant furnaces. Typically the acceptable acetylene contaminant level in the polymer grade ethylene product is in the range of 1 ppmv or lower. Since acetylene will fractionate with ethylene, it needs to...

Design Challenges in Tankage Modernization

Apr 4, 2012
James Kong
In order to comply with regulation requirements, a refinery needs to perform major revamps to produce different grades of Diesel, namely ULSD, Off-road Grade and Regular Diesel. The existing tankage allocation needs to be changed to accommodate the hydrotreater feed components and the new products...

Process Plant Safety: An Attorney's Perspective on Key Legal and Regulatory Issues

Apr 3, 2012
Lynn L. Bergeson
That process plant safety is critically important to the sustainable growth of any manufacturing or other impacted company is indisputable. High profile process plant safety failures such as Deepwater Horizon, Bhopal, and BP Texas City are cautionary tales illustrating the tragic consequences that...

Maintain Safety Excellence in Laboratory Test Facilities

Apr 3, 2012
Amy Theis
Our laboratory contains calorimeters to characterize reactive chemical hazards and multiple different instruments to characterize both dust and gas/vapor explosion hazards. It is a challenge to ensure that each project is completed safely since a wide variety of chemicals are used. Our goal at...

Continuing Our Process Safety Management (PSM) Journey: How Time and Technology Have Helped Change the Public's View (A Case Study for Where We Are Today and Where We Can Go Tomorrow)

Apr 3, 2012
Bruce K. Vaughen
This paper briefly explores the history of basic PSM principles, first describing a historical view of how PSM developed into today's PSM Elements. Then this paper covers a proposed direction for PSM's future that may help address the changing nature of the public's view of the chemical industry –...

The US Chemical Safety Board and Inherently Safer Technology

Apr 2, 2012
Manuel R. Gomez
The United State (US) Chemical Safety Board (CSB) was created by the same legislation that mandated the regulation of high hazard industries by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Process Safety Management (PSM) and the Risk...

Leveraging PSM to Implement Key Elements of a SIS Program

Apr 2, 2012
Dave Grattan
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61511 standard, “Functional Safety – Safety Instrumented Systems for the Process Industry Sector", has achieved wide acceptance within the process sector, including chemicals, oil refining, oil and gas production, pulp and paper, and non-nuclear...

Recognizing Catastrophic Incident Warning Signs in the Process Industries

November, 2011
This book provides guidance on characterizing, recognizing, and responding to warning signs to help avoid process incidents and injuries before they occur. The guidance can be used by both process safety management (PSM) professionals in evaluating their processes and PSM systems as well as for...

The 3rd Edition of Chemical Process Safety, Fundamentals with Applications

Oct 17, 2011
Dr. Daniel A. Crowl
The 3 rd edition of Chemical Process Safety, Fundamentals with Applications was published in the early summer of 2011. The third edition has been rewritten to include new process safety technology, new references, and updated data that have appeared since the first edition was published in 1990 and...

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