Ethylene Plant Safety - Overview of Process Safety Issues in Ethylene Plants

This tutorial will be targeted towards those with less than five years experience working within olefins technology or operations. The session will cover a broad range of process safety issues of concern within a typical olefins plant. It will focus on hazards specific to olefin plants as distinct from general safety issues such as loss of cooling or fire. The emphasis will be on fostering general understanding and recognition of these hazards, and not on a detailed examination of any single topic. Materials and examples presented will draw heavily from papers submitted in previous Ethylene Producer’s Conferences. Some examples of topics that will likely be included are ethylene decomposition, brittle fracture, pyrophoric materials, butadiene hazards, corrosion issues, hazards of running C3/C4 columns in total reflux, handling of molecular sieves, reactor runaway, and furnace transient conditions.