Learning from Fire Accident at Bouali Sina Petrochemical Complex Plant (original) (raw)
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Process Safety for the 21st Century and Beyond
Process safety has been practiced as a field of research and safety management in the oil and chemical industries since the 1960s. Over this period there have been many tragic incidents, which have resulted in fatalities as well as asset, environmental, and reputational damage. While standards have improved since then and much work has been done, particularly in inherently safer design and management systems, catastrophic incidents are still happening and will continue to do so until we tackle them head on. It appears as if we are not learning lessons from the past, because the causes of failures for current incidents are the same as past incidents, albeit in different environments. We must learn from these incidents. As an industry, our inability to learn from past incidents and demonstrate that process safety is improving has led to this project, Process Safety in the 21st Century and Beyond. The aim of this project is to envision better process safety by outlining efforts that each stakeholder can take. The project has been informed by a number of sources and resources. In 2011, the Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center (MKOPSC) published the Process Safety Research Agenda for the 21st Century 1. This defined a number of key areas where ongoing research was necessary to continue building knowledge. In 2013, the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) published a policy paper called Chemical Engineering Matters 2 , which focused on the four challenges of water, energy, food and nutrition, and health and wellbeing, and highlighted process safety as being a necessary enabler to overcome these challenges. In 2017, MKOPSC and the IChemE Safety Centre developed the next level of these visionary documents-Process Safety in the 21st Century and Beyond. It is, however, necessary to overlay other factors, such as industry, regulatory, and societal perspectives in addition to academic research and teaching. Process safety needs to evolve with industry to stay current with the dynamic technological, societal, and economic standards of society. The main question we want to tackle is what are the actions that we can take to improve the operational safety of facilities? Process safety professionals, across industry, academia, and regulators, have an obligation to drive this improvement, because engineering and science are necessary to address the four challenges outlined in Chemical Engineering Matters, and overcoming these challenges is vital for the ongoing survival of the human race and Earth. The explosive growth rate in India and China will likewise increase demand for energy and chemical production. Even if incident rates do not increase, the total number of incidents would increase by a factor of ten or higher, given the projected growth rate in these countries 3. Viewing the MKOPSC and IChemE documents together gives a picture of the research needed to address the challenges in new ways
The necessity of risk management evaluations in petrochemical industries
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The study looked at the need to manage risk in the petrochemical industry due to the horrific events of recent accidents such as India's Bhopal (with 4,000 killed), Ukraine's Chernobyl (with 38 killed), Flixborough, England (With 28 people killed) and Italy's Seveso (with a gas mass released from the blast 6 km long and 1 km wide) (Flixborough Vapor Cloud Explosion). Recent events have drawn public attention to the chemical industry and various risks involved in the petrochemical industry, and then as a result have increased the need for systematic safety analysis of various processes in the chemical industry. According to the International Labor Organization, 5,000 people die every day in the world due to accidents and work-related illnesses and 4% of the world's GDP per year, or 51.53, 1.3 and 2 percent, respectively. Millions of US dollars are spent on direct and indirect costs of work-related illnesses and accidents, which is 20 times more than the total internat...
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Journal of Hazardous Materials, 1992
Working Party (WP) on Loss Prevention (LP) in the Process Industries, of which the authors are all members, was initiated. It is therefore worthwhile to look back and also to look forward to what we can expect to come. For this paper we were asked to focus on the evolution of process safety, particularly as it occurred in the U.K. and The Netherlands.
Process safety enhancement in chemical plant design by exploiting accident knowledge
The accident rate in the chemical industry has not been decreasing although they could be prevented by using the existing knowledge. The aim of this thesis is to enhance the utilization of knowledge from earlier accidents especially in the designing of chemical plants. The experience feedback on accidents is improved by analyzing and disseminating knowledge on accident contributors to design activities. The research was done by analyzing the 364 chemical process accident reports available in the Failure Knowledge Database (FKD). It was found that the technical contributors (79%) dominated the accidents in the CPI. Deeper analyses were carried out to identify the accident contributors, and design and operation errors for the six most common equipment types of accidents. The other indicators of accidents included in the study were; the contributors share as main contributor (SMC), equipment specific contributors, and the combination of high SMC and frequency. In design and operation errors analyses, the study found that about 80% of the accident cases were contributed by at least one design error with an average of 2.3 errors per accident. The timing of the errors was analyzed and it shows that about half (47%) of the design and operation errors were made during the process design-oriented stages. Thus, more focus should be given in the making of fundamental decisions such as process conditions, chemicals and reactions during the early phases of the design. The corrective actions proposed in accident reports employed typically the outer layers of protection such as procedural changes (53% of cases) even though the design errors are generally dominant. The inherently safer design proposed was only 18% of cases; and these were based on the most used principles which were 'error tolerance' and 'moderate'. Current design oriented safety methods do not fully utilize knowledge from earlier accidents and therefore do not facilitate learning. For example, HAZOP is often employed only as a final check and do not support the designer during the work. Therefore the thesis proposed a method for identification of accident contributors and design errors throughout the design stages by utilizing knowledge from earlier accidents. The method is based on information obtained from accident contributors and design errors discovered which will be presented in the first part of this thesis. The aim is to show also their mechanisms and time of creation. The proposed method would support the design process by having an early design error detection and elimination through design changes. Therefore, cost and safety benefits can be achieved by undergoing changes in the earlier stages of plant design. The Bhopal tragedy is used as the case study to demonstrate and test the method. The proposed method could be used to predict an average of up to 85% of accident contributors. Keywords experience feedback, accident contributor, plant design, process lifecycle ISBN (printed) 978-952-60-4909-0 ISBN (pdf) 978-952-60-4910-6
Turkish Economic Review, 2015
This book discusses high-impact low-probability risks (so-called HILP risks) in the gas &oil sector and the chemicals using industries. The text is written in an agreeable style, yet at the same time also suitable for technical experts in risk management and process safety. The book is inclusive, in the sense that a triple perspective is used and the history, the present, as well as the state-of-the-art of dealing with HILP risks is discussed. Both technical and non-technical aspects are thoroughly elaborated, and, wherever possible and useful, linked with hazardous materials data and accident scenario information. The book might be interesting for process safety specialists, but it may also be employed as a handbook or reference work in academia.
Process safety in the future?A view from the chemistry
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This paper advances the thesis that a complete assessment of the chemical process safety must be founded on specific chemical hazards data. Usually, these data can only be obtained from appropriately designed experiments using the correct testing techniques. The basis of safety and the window of safe operations arise from the relevant process safety data.