LPG road tanker accident

Thanks to M. Sujith for sending news about a LPG road tanker accident that reportedly has killed 2 persons in Kerala. Read about it in this link.
I hope the lessons learnt are shared publicly.

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Major fire at Pharma factory

A major fire in a pharma plant near Halol has been reported. The cause was apparently a boiler burst. This reportedly caused a solvent fire. Read the article in this link.
 
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Blast and Fire in Venezuela refinery

News reports of a major blast and fire at a large Venezuela oil refinery are pouring in. 26 persons are feared dead. See the news report and watch raw video of the fire in this link
 
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Metrics and process safety

There is a lot of work in progress regarding leading and lagging indicators for process safety performance. While I do not dismiss the importance of the metrics, the problem is that unless the metrics are understood by the board or whoever is interpreting risk through the usage of these metrics, it will just be another non financial number. A dollar metric will grab eyeballs rather than metrics that tell you about leading indicators for process safety. This is the nature of humans. This can be avoided only by having technically competent personnel on the board of chemical companies. I believe things will improve only after it becomes legally necessary to have technically competent persons on the board of chemical companies and make them responsible for process safety management. Otherwise we will only keep seeing newer and newer terminologies but accidents will continue to happen and I will never be out of a job as a Process Safety Consultant!!
I welcome your views.

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Accidents in batch processes

The Safety, Health and Environment Association, Bharuch has posted several incidents on its website. One such incident mentions the following:
"Incident:
During nitration in reactor runaway reaction occurred and suddenly the pressure of reactor raised and explosion took place within few seconds in reactor. Manhole of reactor was opened due to high pressure. Nitric Acid, sulfuric Acid & Benzoic Acid were involved in reaction. In this incident the mixtures of acids were sprayed in process plant, company ground and nearby company. The roof sheets of plant were broken due to explosion. It was sprayed up to about 200 – 300 meters in down wind direction
Cause of Accident:
As per information received from company officials the explosion occurred due to runaway reaction during nitration from reactor of process plant.
Corrective Action
Lime was sprayed on the acidic mixture in whole the affected area in company & on the road also for neutralization. After that the road was washed out with water. Company people also sprayed lime on the acid mixture in their company ground & Process Plant.
Preventive Action
1. Process parameters to be followed strictly.
2. PRV & safety valve to be maintained in working condition with proper venting system.
3. Periodical maintenance & inspection should be done.
4. Employees should be trained in process safety.
5. Laboratory Study for knowledge relative to normal & abnormal known deviation in raw material, Process parameter"

Read more incidents on their website in this link.

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Reducing solvent in batch reactors

Have you done proper analysis before you try to reduce solvents in batch reactors and replace them with more raw material in a bid to increase capacity? An article mentions about the solvent effect on peroxide decomposition and concludes with the following:
"This study is focused on runaway decompositions as they’re more interesting in plant safety and risk analysis, because in the past they have been the cause of severe accidents. In particular solvent influence has been analyzed, proving that a solvent change has always to be tested before applied in reactor scale in order to avoid an anomalous runaway behaviour of the reaction. Screening calorimetry allowed us to analyze these processes in safety and to gain useful results such as onset temperatures, ranges of temperature and pressure evolved by reactions and others. Remember that screening equipments are not adiabatic and data have to be validated by tests run in adiabatic and reaction calorimeters, where real operational conditions (such as agitation and heat transfer) can be simulated; the use of the TSu makes it possible to save time and reduce the number of experiments with laboratory scale calorimeters".

Read the article in this link. 

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Another tank blows its roof!

An explosion in a 80KL emulsifier tank in an asphalt manufacturing tank in USA has blown the roof lid off the tank. The lid was thrown a sizable distance away causing damage to cars and structures. When you look at the video, please realize that many of your storage tanks that store flammable chemicals may be of much bigger capacity and you can imagine the consequence of an explosion in your tank. Follow all your company hot work procedures strictly.
See the news report and video in this link.


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Refinery fire - possible ignition source and some pictures

Initial investigation into the refinery fire in USA reveals that the possible ignition source could have been an idling  fire truck that was already at the scene prior to the pipe rupture. Investigators are also trying to find out why the  40 year old pipe that ruptured was not replaced even though an adjacent pipe was replaced in the turnaround a few months before the incident.
Read the news report in this link.
See "24 strangely beautiful pictures" of the  refinery fire in this link. You can see two plumes of smoke - one from the fire and one from the flare due to the emergency shutdown.

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Jaipur oil depot fire - powerpoint presentation

An excellent presentation on the IOC Jaipur oil depot fire and Government appointed Shri MB Lall's investigation committee recommendations has been made by Shri SK Roy, GM, HSE, IOC. It can be viewed in this link.

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Corrosion - cause of refinery fire?

 Preliminary investigations by the CSB indicate that corrosion could be the reason for the recent large fire at a refinery in USA. The 8" pipe that failed also had a 12" pipe connected to it. In a turnaround in 2011, the 12" pipe was replaced due to corrosion.  A news article mentions the following "The pipe that failed Monday dated back to the 1970s, investigators said, but it is still unclear whether the thickness testing conducted by Chevron in its last major inspections noted corrosion in that specific, 8-inch pipe". Read the news article in this link.


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Sulphuric acid manufacturing

You can download a good presentation by Dr Mubarak of Jordan, on sulphuric acid manufacturing and associated technical details from this link.
This will be useful for the technical training of operators in sulphuric acid plants.

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Fire in refinery

The CSB is proceeding to investigate a fire in a refinery in the US. The fire was apparently caused by a vapor leak. No one was reportedly killed. It appears that it was a cooling tower fire caused by a flammable vapour ingress. Read the news article and see pictures of the damage in this link.
Thanks to Sanjeevi for sending the link.
See a video of the press conference where the General Manager gets heckled by angry residents in this link. 

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Lessons to learn from emergency drill

An emergency drill was conducted at a production site in Terneuzen, The Netherlands.  See the photos from the drill in this link. There are lessons to learn even from the photos. Do you have the adequate emergency response equipment? Are your people trained to handle these equipment?
See the photos of the drill in this link. 

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An accident due to mixing of chemicals

An accident occurred last month on a work table where two employees were mixing red phosphorus and fiberglass powder. A news article mentions that "Investigators said the employees mix these chemicals on a daily basis in the manufacturing of igniters for military oxygen generators." Static electricity is thought to be the cause of ignition. 

Read the article and see the video in this link.

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H2S desorption incident

I came across and incident where three people died due to H2S liberation when old molecular sieves were exposed to water, that, in turn liberated H2S through a process of desorbtion. This incident highlights the need to understand the technical aspects of process safety which I had mentioned in my last post.
Read the incident in this link.

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Fire in chemical tanker threatened methanol tanks

A chemical/palm oil tanker Bunga Alpinia caught fire, while berthed alongside at Petronas Chemicals Methanol Sdn Bhd terminal in Labuan, Malaysia on the morning of 26th July. Apparently the tanker was discharging cargo when fire on board started from technical breakdown. Though the news article says the cargo was LNG, it was methanol. A lightning strike apparently was the cause of the fire.
There are a number of pictures in this link about the fire and fire fighting operations. See how close the burning tanker was to the onshore tanks containing methanol. They were lucky!

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Not learning from process safety incidents

An article in the Houston Chronicle mentions that "After the lethal explosion at BP's Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers in 2005, the oil industry boosted safety at industrial operations on land but never made the same improvements offshore, according to federal investigators meeting in Houston this week.
The Chemical Safety Board is set to conclude that the offshore drilling sector's focus on monitoring individual worker injuries - while ignoring bigger warning signs of "process safety" problems that could lead to emergencies - set the stage for the Deepwater Horizon disaster."
Read the article in this link. 
I have seen this phenomenon occurring in large chemical manufacturing groups. The lessons from a process safety incident in one unit in a large group was not learnt in another unit of the group. I was heartened to read an article in the newspaper today where a large pharma manufacturer is planning to appoint a technical head to streamline operations to a consistent level. The article mentions that "Underlining the importance of technical expertise, Mr Shanghvi said, historically, for example, senior people with a marketing background handled businesses and also manufacturing. But they would have limited technical expertise, and so the company is looking to separate the two and create a separate set of systems for manufacturing, he said".
I wish all chemical manufacturing companies give the same importance to technical competence as process safety does require a lot of technical competence to understand and follow. Read the article in this link. 
 
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Safety valves and vibration

A news article mentions that there is a dispute between BP and OSHA over spring loaded safety valves. the article mentions that "OSHA is concerned because improperly set valves can result in too much shaking, said Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA. That vibration could cause the valves -which regulate the opening and closing of pressure vessels - to break.BP believes the valves "comply with industry standards and do not constitute a safety hazard," said spokesman"
The article also mentions that the total cost of the 2005 BP Texas city refinery explosion is 3.5 billion dollars.
Read the article in this link.

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Another manlift accident

After replacing a cone roof on a tank, the contractor crew was removing unwanted material from the work site using a manlift. The incident report mentions that "One item to be moved was a steel box full of metal parts, weighing a total of approximately 900 pounds. Rather than split the load into smaller lots, the Tank Service Supervisor decided to remove the loaded box from the roof using the manlift, so the box was rigged to the underside of the operator’s basket on the lift.
As he began moving the boom over, the manlift suddenly tipped over because the combined weight of the contractor and equipment in the lift basket greatly exceeded the machine’s posted capacity limits. The box hit the ground first. The basket the Tank Services Supervisor was in immediately landed on the box; the force of impact loosened the slings, detaching the box from the basket. With the weight of the box off the basket, the counterweight righted the lift, causing the basket to quickly rebound to about 15’ above grade.
The sudden, forceful, upward movement of the boom catapulted the Tank Services Supervisor out of the basket to the ground. He was wearing a harness and lanyard at the time, but had failed to “tie off” to the anchor point in the basket before he moved the lift. He was hospitalized and is recovering"
Read the incident report in this link.


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Process Safety and Road Safety

Everyday, a large number of tankers carrying hazardous chemicals traverse across India's roads. Chemical manufacturers and suppliers do take all required precautions during the transportation. GPS systems are used for tracking vehicles from a central control room. But the safety sense of other road users need to improve a lot. An article in Livemint mentions the abysmal  state of road safety in India. The article mentions that "The number of deaths (in road accidents) is equal to three jets crashing every day (410 human beings), but since aircraft aren’t involved, they don’t make headlines. Annually about 150,000 people die every year due to road accidents, and about 400,000 people get maimed, the cost of which is about Rs. 1 trillion".

Read the article in this link.
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