PSM CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION TO PROCESS SAFETY

 IMPORTANCE OF SAFETY

- unauthorized use or operation of Unsafe acts Fundamental types Unsafe conditions - lack of adequate guards or safety
equipment of accident cause
devices
- operating or working at unsafe - lack of adequate warning systems
speed (jumping steps or taking - fire and explosion hazards
Important definitions
shortcut) - poor housekeeping, especially
- using defective tools or slippery surfaces
equipment - using defective tools or equipment
- accident: an unexpected, unforeseen and unintended event that cause injury,
loss or damage
- type of losses: loss of time, production/sale, lives, other indirect hidden loss
- safety or loss prevention is the prevention of accidents using appropriate
technologies to identify the before and accident occurs
- Hazard: a chemical or physical condition that has the potential to cause  SAFETY PROGRAM
1. SYSTEM
damage to people, property or environment -to record what need to be done to have
- risk: a measure of human injury, environmental damage or economic loss in an outstanding safety program
terms of both the incident likelihood and the magnitude of the loss of injury
2. ATTITUDE
-willingness to do some of the
 ACCIDENT AND LOSS STATISTICS thankless work that is required for
-important to determine whether a process is safe of whether a safety procedure is working effectively success
-3 systems to measure accident and loss performance are: i) OSHA incident rate 3. FUNDAMENTALS
ii) Fatal accident rate (FAR) -understand the fundamentals of
iii) Fatality rate, or deaths per person per year chemical process safety in term of
design, construction and operation.

i) OSHA (occupational safety &health act) incident rate 4. EXPERIENCE

- OSHA incidence rate is based on cases per 100 worker years -learn for the past experience or history
- A worker year is assumed to contain 2000 hours 5. TIME
- therefore, OSHA incident rate is based on 200,000 hrs of worker exposed to hazard -time to study, works, record result,
share experience and train

𝑊𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟 = × = 2000 6. YOU

-take responsibly to contribute to safety
(assume works 8hr a day, and 5dy per week) program
 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑖𝑛𝑗𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 & 𝑖𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠 × 200,000
𝑂𝑆𝐻𝐴 (𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑗𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑛𝑒𝑠𝑠) =
𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑

𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠 × 200,000

𝑂𝑆𝐻𝐴 (𝑏𝑎𝑠𝑒𝑑 𝑜𝑛 𝑙𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑑𝑎𝑦𝑠) =
𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑

ii) Fatal accident rate (FAR)

- based on 1000 employees working their entire lifetime Both OSHA and Far depend on the
- employees are assumed to work a total of 50 years number of exposed hours
- thus, the FAR is based on 108 working hours.
-FAR can converted to fatality rate
(vice versa) if the number of
𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 × 10
𝐹𝐴𝑅 = exposed hours is known
𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑘𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑙 𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑙𝑜𝑦𝑒𝑒𝑠 𝑑𝑢𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑝𝑒𝑟𝑖𝑜𝑑 𝑐𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑑
-OSHA cannot be converted to
FAR or fatality rate
iii) Fatality rate, or deaths per person per year
- represent death per person per year
- independent of the number of hours actually work and reports only the number of fatalities
expected per person per year
- useful in calculate the population where the number exposed hour is poorly defined

𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑓𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑒𝑠 𝑝𝑒𝑟 𝑦𝑒𝑎𝑟

𝑓𝑎𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑡𝑦 𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑒 =
𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑝𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑎𝑝𝑝𝑙𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑏𝑙𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

 ACCIDENT RISK
- risk is the product of probability of the occurrence of an accident and severity of the accident
- risk cannot be eliminated entirely
-therefore, necessary to decide if the risk is in “acceptable level” at some point in the design stage
- engineers should try to minimise risks within the economic constraints of the process
 INHERENT SAFETY
- Relies on the chemistry and physics to prevent accidents rather than on control system, interlock, redundancy and special operating procedures to prevent
accidents
- the safety of the process relies on multiple layer of protection
1st layer: process design feature
2nd layer: control systems, interlocks, safety shutdown systems, protective systems, alarms and emergency response plants.
-inherent safety is especially direct toward process design features
- the best approach to prevent accident is to add process design features to prevent hazardous conditions
- the most significant effect to increase inherent safety of a process or plant is in the initial stage of process development
- four words are recommended to describe inherent safety
i) minimize (intensification)
 reducing the hazards by using smaller qualities of hazarding substances in reactor,
distillation column, storage vessel, pipeline
 hazardous material should produce and consumed in situ, to minimize the storage and transportation of hazardous raw materials
 vapours released from spills can be minimized by designing dikes to reduce accumulation of flammable and toxic materials around leaking tanks
 smaller tanks can be reducing the release of hazards materials
ii) substitute (substitution)
 safer materials should be used top replace the hazardous one by using alternative chemistry that allow the use of less hazardous materials or less
severe processing conditions

iii) moderate (attenuation and limitation of effects)

 using hazardous materials under less hazardous condition such as diluting to a lower vapour pressure, refrigerating to lower the vapour pressure,
using larger particle size solids, processing under less severe temperature and pressure
iv) simplify (simplification and error tolerance)
 simpler plant provides fewer opportunities for error because contain less equipment
 complexity of plant is caused by the need to add equipment and automation to control the hazards