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PROCESS SAFETY
Simon Gakhar presents a safety consultants view of how to raise the priority of investing in safety with those who control your companys purse strings
Often, we revisit a site, sometimes years after the first assessment, to find only a small percentage of actions have been addressed, usually the cheap and easy ones.
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safety
accident
prioritise
A client once asked me: Tell me the ten things I need to do avoid blowing up my plant tomorrow. Sometimes its narrowed down even further to say, two or three key actions. Picking out the really important actions, usually on the basis of risk, accompanied by a suggested implementation timescale, gives a clear message that only essential expenditure is being proposed. This is nothing new by any means but is often overlooked or the prioritisation is not carried out carefully enough, resulting in every recommendation being assigned a high priority to be completed in six months. This results in a lack of credibility for the prioritisation methodology and often results in lack of action. Senior management want to see the effect of the recommended action on the magnitude of the risk reduction. Even if prioritisation is done well, in these tight economic times they sometimes still cant envisage why such measures are necessary. This leads us to the second option.
demonstrate
In creative writing, using show not tell as
a writing style is a well known technique for success, and the same is true for process safety. Theres still a poor perception of the potential consequences of major incidents such as explosions or runaway chemical reactions. However, in my experience, recommendations to clients who have had experience of major incidents first hand (maybe with a previous employer) are far more likely to be implemented. So I show people what can happen ideally, Id love to take people to some of the incident sites we visit, as the reality is far worse than you see on the news or read in incident reports. Of course, you cant show explosions on the plant, but we have used small-scale demonstrations in our training courses for many years and these have a tremendous effect on peoples attitudes. Our delegates continue to be amazed at the explosive energy of just 1 g of combustible powder. More recently, we have developed smallscale demonstrations for gas explosions, flash fires, pressure and vacuum hazards and chemical reaction hazards. Some of the IChemE Flash Bang demonstrations (which can be found on IChemEs YouTube channel) are examples of some which can be used,
the whoosh bottle being one we now use frequently. Demonstrations do not need to be limited to training courses and can be used to prompt action where there may be hesitation to spend money. One client questioned the need for improved explosion protection as he couldnt believe dust was all that dangerous. Showing pictures of explosion-damaged equipment from similar industries or even destroyed factories didnt seem to sink in. However, exploding a few grammes of dust taken from the companys own process showed how violent its material could be. The end result was that the client immediately (and I mean immediately) placed the order for the very much-needed upgrade. Another company was struggling to understand why certain risk reduction measures were needed to avoid the explosion risk in a cabinet where there was a risk of small amounts of alcohol being released. After all, the largest amount which could be released was only 500 ml, smaller than a bottle of whisky. Using the whoosh bottle demonstration, I showed what could happen if, for example, there was no ventilation and only about 40 ml was released.
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Option 1 2
PROCESS SAFETY
Description Designate Zone 22 for 1 m around flexible connections and upgrade all equipment accordingly Provide secondary seal around the flexible connections (and eliminate the zone)
Showing videos like those available from the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is also a good way to stimulate action. But its surprising how many people working in the chemical industry still believe that it couldnt happen here . If I show a video of an incident in one industry sector you often get responses like, Thats all very interesting but we dont use sugar here . So in order to stimulate action to address a specific issue, try to find examples of incidents which involved the same or closely-related materials handled, which happened in the same industry sector and with the same or similar equipment. In other words, try to be as specific as possible with what you show. For example, discussing Buncefield with a bakery, even if to illustrate a common safety management failing, will not be as effective as using the Imperial Sugar incident. Also, if possible use a recent incident, as this will highlight the fact that even with more up-to-date technology and tighter legislation, accidents still happen.
An example is when trying to justify measures to reduce the risk of ignition from mechanical equipment, eg for ATEX compliance. Many of the measures which can improve safety such as condition monitoring or improved/increased planned maintenance will also improve equipment reliability. You may not have a history of explosions caused by failed bearings on pumps but you would be quite unique not to have a history of breakdowns for the same reason. Therefore it should be possible to work out the potential cost savings of reduced breakdowns based on factors such as increased plant downtime, less peripheral damage, or reduced manpower. Also look for simpler, lower-cost alternatives to improve safety. The lower the cost and the easier and quicker to install, the more likely it will get sanctioned. This might not get you the ideal safety solution you originally wanted but it will get you something which reduces the risk, which is the ultimate objective. This sounds like common sense but its surprisingly often not practised. A recent example of this is a client who asked our opinion on the need to install explosion isolation on a new dust collection system using a reverse jet filter. They needed to justify the expenditure and wanted help to determine if propagation was sufficiently likely with the proposed layout and materials. This isnt an easy one to answer as there is experimental evidence that explosions can propagate back along extraction ductwork, but the exact circumstances for when it will not happen are not as well understood as we would like. When we looked more closely at the process, we realised that very little dust was created at source, with the majority of material being very coarse and incapable of dust explosion. So we questioned the need for a reverse jet filter which would have concentrated the dust and created a potential dust explosion hazard. A better and much cheaper solution was to put in a small cyclone or cartridge type filter to collect the material. There would be an extremely low likelihood of a flammable dust cloud internally, meaning that no explosion protection or expensive isolation would be required, along with less maintenance. We also find that companies dont like spending money on upgrading equipment in hazardous (zoned) areas. But they will often accept large hazardous areas as it often leads
to improved flexibility in their operations. Of course you cant have it both ways large hazardous areas and reluctance to invest in managing those hazardous areas effectively. Given the choice of the two options in Table 1, which do you think would be most likely to be implemented? Our client naturally implemented Option 2 (see Figure 1). This was a very good choice as it not only improved safety, but actually achieved other cost savings and operational benefits such as: it minimised the potential for the flammable atmosphere rather thanrelying on controlling the ignition source; a lower level of skill is required to maintain a rubber seal as opposed to Ex equipment; it resulted in fewer restrictions in the area as it is no longer classified as hazardous; there was less plant downtime; it led to a cleaner and more hygienic work environment; and it reduced product loss.
conclusions
Getting authorisation to spend money on process safety improvements can be difficult even in a good economic climate. Despite ever increasing legislation we find that implementation of risk reduction programmes still has to compete, often unfavourably, with other necessary expenditure. One key issue is that the immediate benefit of reducing risk cannot be easily measured in terms of return on investment. This article has presented some ideas on possible ways to increase the likelihood of getting higher priority for process safety expenditure. Remember: prioritise focus on the really important risk reduction measures; demonstrate very specifically what could happen without the suggested improvements; show that the safety improvement can generate an immediate and measurable return on investment; and look for simpler, lower-cost solutions for risk reduction there is often an alternative available. tce Simon Gakhar (sgakhar@chilworthglobal. com) is technical manager, process safety consultingat Chilworth Technology.