Neste has made a video of process safety fundamentals. Watch their video in this link
April 30, 2024
January 4, 2023
A spotlight on IoT-enabled predictive maintenance
Texmark Chemicals ushers in the Refinery of the Future
A spotlight on IoT-enabled predictive maintenance
In an industry with a long history of reluctance to change, Texmark Chemicals, with the help of Deloitte, embraced digital innovations such as the industrial Internet of Things (IoT), a new technology in the chemical industry, to drive profitability and create a repeatable use case in predictive maintenance IoT.
June 12, 2022
WHY HAZOP STUDY IS IMPORTANT
Approximately 200 lbs ammonia was released to atmosphere. The condenser safety valve activated due to ‘no cooling’ in the condenser while the ammonia compressor was operating. While restarting the plant after a power failure, the operator forgot to start the condenser circulating pump (which should be started before starting the compressor). The compressor was started without condenser cooling, and as a result, ammonia gas temperature began to rise, thus raising the gas pressure in the system. Eventually the gas pressure rose more than the safety valve setting, activating the safety valve which released the
ammonia to atmosphere.
The compressor’s high pressure safety cut off did not activate. The high pressure cut off is supposed to activate and shut off the compressor unit when the system senses a high pressure condition.
Source: British Columbia Safety Authority
January 1, 2022
WISH YOU A HAPPY NEW YEAR!
To all my readers, wish you a very Happy and Healthy 2022! Play your part in avoiding LOPC's!
December 2, 2021
ANOTHER ANNIVERSARY OF BHOPAL.....National Process Safety Week on anniversary of Bhopal disaster December 3rd
Tonight is the 37th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster. We still do
not seem to learn from Bhopal. The same mistakes that occurred at Bhopal
keep recurring in various incidents around the World. Production
pressures along with cost cutting measures take a toll on process
safety. Just like the National safety week in march, I mooted the idea of
having a National Process Safety Week every year on the anniversary of
Bhopal for all chemical industries in India. During this week, the root
causes of the Bhopal disaster and process incidents in individual
organisations can be discussed with all employees including top
management. The root causes are again given below: They are still
relevant today:
2. Maintain all your layers of defense including asset integrity
3. Continually ensure that competency of personnel operating and maintaining plants are updated and current
4. Be prepared for the worst case scenario.
5. Understand the risks and measures to eliminate / reduce or control them
6. Learn from your past incidents. Those who do not learn are condemned to repeat the incidents.
7. Pay heed to your process safety management system audit reports
I am again attaching the link of some pictures of the victims of Bhopal, lest we forget..........
" Mothers didn't know their children had died, children didn't know their mothers had died, and men didn't know their whole families had died" - Ahmed Khan, Bhopal resident on the Bhopal disaster
August 24, 2021
May 9, 2021
March 27, 2021
My presentation on Whats Going Wrong in PSM - 36 years after Bhopal?
I am giving a presentation in the First Jordanian International Chemical Process Safety Virtual Conference to be held on 30th and 31st March 2021. My topic is "Whats Going wrong with PSM - 36 years after Bhopal?" and is scheduled on 30th March,21 between 1500 to1515 hrs Jordan time (1730 to 1745 hrs IST) The registration to the conference is free and there are very good speakers lined up.
Register in this link http://www.jeaconf.org/JCPSC/ConferenceFees Registration is FREE
January 9, 2021
MY ARTICLE IN CEP ISSUE JANUARY 2021
My fourth article "Understand Process Hazards to Safely manage Change" has been published in the January 2021 issue of the CEP magazine of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. Read it after logging in in this link https://www.aiche.org/publications/cep
You have to be a member of AIChE to read it.
December 27, 2020
STARTING MY 11TH YEAR OF BLOGGING!
Dear Readers,
Thank you for being with me for the past 10 years since I started my blog.
1800 posts, 325000 views, about 800 incidents and many of my readers spreading the information from the posts through process safety one point lessons within their own organizations...I am still far from satisfied. My mission in life has been "Preventing another Bhopal" and let us not rest till we have achieved it. How can you help? By the following steps:
- Never be silent when you see something going wrong - it could be a decision that is not in the interest of process safety - speak up!
- Share past incidents (internal incidents and external incidents) and their root causes, with all your colleagues - we see the same old incidents repeating
- As an engineer, be ethical when taking decisions and do not take decisions because they please the boss
- Update your technical knowledge continuously
- Do not be carried away by all the technologies that vendors try to sell you. Thoroughly study them and employ only those technologies that are useful to you. Don't get carried away by Jargon.
- Wear your engineering hat always, even when you go up the management ladder.
- Be aware of normalization of deviations around you. Report them and determine the root causes. You work in a chemical plant. You and your colleagues should not have the misfortune of seeing people die before your eyes because of an incident....
I end by quoting Robert Frost, "The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have miles to go before I sleep"
January 4, 2020
My article on Flare Systems published in Chemical Engineering progress of AIChE
"Manage Change to Flare Systems" has been published in the January 2020 issue of CEP. Please see it in this link
July 11, 2019
May 15, 2019
Process Safety Management, Jenga, Drift, and Preventing Process Industry Accidents | Applied Engineering Solutions
May 11, 2019
Confusing Personal and Process Safety?
March 5, 2019
My article published in CEP magazine of AIChE
This is my second article that has been published in CEP. The first "Moving Process Safety into the Boardroom" was published in September 2015.
https://www.aiche.org/resources/publications/cep/2015/september/moving-process-safety-board-room
January 26, 2019
Preventing incidents: Effective process safety management
August 9, 2018
July 24, 2018
Loss of Primary Containment (LOPC)
Source: CCPS Glossary