Our White Papers

Safe design ― design that effectively minimizes the likelihood of process accidents and mitigates their consequences ― has long been a priority in the process industries. Today, process industry companies need to be certain that their stakeholders have confidence in how they manage the environmental, health and safety implications of industrial activities.

This paper outlines the basic understanding of the operability of rupture disks, the concept of Manufacturing Design Range, ASME-dictated tolerance, and how the owner of rupture disks may inadvertently and surreptitiously slip into code violation due to misinterpretation of technicalities and testing lot-creeps.

Proper characterization of reactive systems is required to ensure the mechanical integrity of processing equipment and to avoid potential hazards such as fires, explosions, and toxic cloud dispersions. As the temperature of the vessel contents deviates from safe operating limits and becomes too high, the rate of heat production by the chemical reaction (i.e., exponential function of temperature) can exceed the processing equipment rate of heat loss and/or cooling capacity (i.e., linear function of temperature) leading to a runaway reaction.

Security threats can come from internal or external adversaries. Internal threats include disgruntled employees and/or contractors, or employees forced into cooperation by threat of extortion or violence. External sources include criminals, extremists or terrorists.

The last few months have witnessed a high degree of focus on understanding and managing chemical reactivity to improve safety in process plants. These efforts have reinforced an important aspect of chemical reactivity, i.e. it is extremely complicated to try and list properties characterizing reactivity hazards. As an example, commercial explosives contain 2000 cal/g or more of energy

This paper outlines one organization’s efforts on enhancement of their process safety management systems. In this case study the original process safety systems were established to support and drive risk management and compliance in response to American Chemical Council’s Responsible Care initiatives preceding U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) process safety management (PSM) and Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Plan (RMP).

To reduce time to market, the industry is putting out new products at a faster rate and outsourcing more activities than ever before. Time is of the essence. Therefore, technology transfer during product development, whether within and between companies, needs to work perfectly the first time, exceed expectations, and meet regulatory compliance.

The loss of High Pressure (HP) / Low Pressure (LP) interface has to be evaluated in order to (a) ensure that the downstream equipment can handle the energy and/or mass accumulation and (b) to also ensure that the upstream equipment can handle the rapid depressurization.

Facility siting has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years and is an important aspect of process safety for plant personnel and their contractors. In December 2009, API issued the Third Edition of the Recommended Practice 752, “Management of Hazards Associated with Location of Process Plant Permanent Buildings,”

As we start a new year, we can take pride in our accomplishments for 2002. Unfortunately, we cannot linger too long because there are new challenges awaiting us in 2003.

Despite investment of considerable resources to conduct PHAs, many companies are still experiencing a high rate of incidents and find that the causes of these incidents have not been identified and/or addressed in their PHAs.

With the increased regulatory focus on pressure relief and flare systems (PRFS) design basis, many companies are in the process of updating their existing relief systems design documentation.

PRV stability, inlet pressure drop and built-up backpressure, should be evaluated at the rated capacity of the PRV. The rated capacity of the PRV corresponds to a specific overpressure, which is 10% of the set pressure or 3 psi, whichever is greater, for ASME VIII certified relief devices.

This paper illustrates a case study that compiles and analyses management system audit findings and related data from a sample of 16 process facilities.

Vessels and pipes filled with fluids require pressure relief in order to protect from loss of containment caused by fluid thermal expansion. Thermal expansion of fluids occurs when the fluid is heated as a result of steam tracing, solar radiation, external fire, etc.