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by Gordon Ellis -
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Chemical engineering practitioners, process safety professionals, and affiliated stakeholders from the chemical process industries (CPI) will gather in Houston, TX, when AIChE and its Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) conduct the 2023 AIChE Spring Meeting and 19th Global Congress on Process Safety (GCPS) at the George R. Brown Convention Center and Hilton of the Americas, Mar. 12–16.
Organized around the theme “Embracing the Future of Chemical Engineering,” this year’s conference — in addition to delivering fresh perspectives on chemical engineering fundamentals — will delve into innovative areas of practice, and the many ways that future chemical engineers can shape and serve industry and society. This focus on new opportunities includes the debut of a topical conference devoted to the energy transition, as well as comprehensive programming by AIChE’s Fuels and Petrochemicals Div. devoted to traditional subject matter in that sector.
The Spring Meeting also continues its coverage of chemical engineering’s role in manufacturing, incorporating sessions on process intensification techniques and approaches related to Industry 4.0. Along with topical conferences highlighting emerging technologies in clean energy and waste-water management, the program also features the 35th Ethylene Producers’ Conference, as well as tracks devoted to distillation, refinery processing, gas utilization, hydrogen safety, waste plastics, professional skills development, and more.
Kicking off the conference on Monday, March13 is the AIChE Government and Industry Leaders (AGILE) Award Lecture, which will be present by Michael J. Graff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of American Air Liquide Holdings, Inc., and Executive Vice President and Executive Committee Member of Air Liquide Group. Keynote speakers will also introduce programming at the Ethylene Producers’ Conference and at the jointly sponsored Fuels and Petrochemicals/Industry 4.0 plenary.
Conference bundle registrants will find a reserved seat at daily keynote luncheons, with guest speakers reflecting on some of the meeting’s key topics. The speakers include David Yankovitz, Principal and Cross-Business U.S. Chemicals Market Leader at Deloitte (March 13); Gayle Schueller, Senior Vice President and Chief Sustainability Officer at 3M (March 14); and Rodney Reed, Assistant Chief of Operational Support for the Harris County (TX) Fire Marshal’s Office (March 15). Reed will discuss emergency-response planning in his talk “Each Disaster — Managed Together.”
Panel discussions, poster sessions, exhibits, and receptions round out the program. The latest information about these featured events is available at www.aiche.org/spring.
19th Global Congress on Process Safety
Organized by CCPS and AIChE’s Safety and Health Div., the Global Congress on Process Safety is the foremost annual gathering of safety engineers, plant managers, and process designers from the CPI. Stakeholders from organizations worldwide convene to assess technologies and discuss strategies to avoid incidents, manage risk, ensure plant safety, and improve process safety management (PSM) programs across the CPI.
The GCPS launches on March 13 with a Welcome Plenary Session highlighted by a keynote talk presented by Chris Tagoe, Senior Vice President of Health, Safety, and Environment at LyondellBasell. Tagoe’s lecture is entitled “Building a Culture of Process Safety as a Value — By the ‘Power of Many’.”
Programming at the Global Congress begins with the 57th Annual Loss Prevention Symposium, which will present lessons learned from incident investigations, as well as topics such as facility siting, emergency planning and response, risk assessment, explosion prevention, fire protection, safety systems, mitigation technologies, hydrogen safety, and more.
The 38th CCPS International Conference promotes systematic process safety management by identifying emerging process safety challenges and promoting best practices. This year’s program reviews the components of effective PSM programs, with sessions covering workforce competencies, safety culture, black swan events, safety systems, cybersecurity, process safety in developing nations, and more.
The 25th Process Plant Safety Symposium focuses on strategies and practices that can contribute to stronger safety cultures within plants and among personnel. This year’s agenda highlights a selection of big-data success stories applied to PSM (March 13) and a “Yoda” panel of process safety experts (March 14), along with sessions about the changing face of PSM, hazard identification and analysis, process safety influencers, cybersecurity, and other topics.
The 12th Process Safety Management Mentoring Forum offers tutorials presented by experienced safety professionals, who share their knowledge with early-career practitioners and others who may be new to the fundamentals of process safety.
Perspectives on Process Safety from Around the Globe elaborate on CCPS’s vision for universal process safety excellence, with perspectives from organizations in China, Japan, and Latin America. Select sessions will be presented in Spanish and Portuguese.
Capping off the Spring Meeting and GCPS is the popular returning session “Case Histories and Lessons Learned,” spotlighting real-world incident investigations and providing insights to benefit any chemical engineer or CPI stakeholder. Topics on the agenda include lessons learned from recent gasoline storage tank lightning strikes and coal gasification events, a review of the Aqaba Bay (Jordan) chlorine incident, a catastrophic explosion investigation, and lessons learned from the 2021 Texas power outages, among other topics.
For the latest program information, or to register, visit www.aiche.org/spring or www.aiche.org/gcps.