Conference Presentations - 2010 Global Congress on Process Safety

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Objective Analysis of PSM Audit Data

Mar 23, 2010
Jerry Forest
In developing systems for Process Safety Management, compliance audits are integral with verification that practices and procedures are developed and are effective for compliance. Data collected during compliance audits is often subjective and findings are descriptive in nature. It is therefore...

Challenges in Hosting an NEP Inspection

Mar 23, 2010
Ken Hanchey
An NEP inspection can be very resource intensive; OSHA has received over well over 10,000 pages of documentation at one refinery during an NEP inspection. Developing a strategy that aligns with your corporate governance and protocols could be the key to a successful outcome. The strategy should...

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...

Hazards of Unplanned Power Outages: Implementing Appropriate Safeguards

Mar 23, 2010
Russell A. Ogle
Accident root cause investigations often may identify unplanned power outages as the cause of a catastrophic accident. Unplanned power outages can be an initiating event that leads to an emergency shutdown of a process unit. If the emergency shutdown is managed incorrectly, it can result in an...

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