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September 15, 2013

Inherent safety and LOPA

A Chemical Engineering friend of mine (Vijay) who has about 35 years of experience in Process Industry wrote in to say this:

"Participated in a LOPA study involving pyrophoric materials. However, what struck me was people failed to understand intrinsic safe and unsafe. They did not grasp that giving high SIL rank and spending lot more on SIL certified instrumentation does not buy any increased safety from accidents that can occur when a pyrophoric material is handled. Only a process change can make things safer, not SIL certification or LOPA for inherently unsafe processes. This also happens to be the message of Fukushima. But people dont get it".

There is a strong lesson in his message!!
 
Contribute to the surviving victims of Bhopal by buying my book "Practical Process Safety Management"

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