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A listing in reverse chronological order of articles by:
BLEVE stands for Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion
If a tank containing liquid is subjected to external fire, the heat from the fire lead to boiling of the liquid. This in turn leads to increased pressure in the tank. This “boiling” liquid and “expanding” vapor may increase the pressure significantly and cause the tank to rupture. If the released liquid is flammable , it can catch on fire resulting in a fire and explosion.
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Paul Gladieux has over 45 years of experience working in the quality profession. In 1991, he founded Global Quality Management Advisors (GQM Advisors). The group provides quality-related services focused on management system design, development, compliance, and certification in a wide range of sectors. His clients in the energy sector include companies such as: NuScale Power LLC, BWX Technologies, Westinghouse Nuclear AP1000 Program, Terra Power LLC, Worley Energy | Chemicals, U.S. Department of Energy, Westinghouse Nuclear, Vigor Industrials LLC, and Alyeska Pipeline Service Company.
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Inherently safer philosophy represents a slightly different approach to risk mitigation. Instead of focusing on mitigating risks, an inherently safer alternative focuses on eliminating the hazards.Let us look at couple of inherently safer examples.
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Iterative software development approaches have been around since the 1950s but many mark the beginning of what is commonly thought of as Agile as the creation of the Agile Manifesto, a document written by a number of software engineers in 2001, which contains 12 principles that serve as guidelines to how software projects should be conducted. Since then, professional services and product organizations have taken Agile and bent and twisted it into proprietary commercial forms for their own gain.
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Because of their dependability and long effective lifespan, lithium ion rechargeable batteries are used in almost all modern electronic gadgets – cell phones, laptops, digital cameras, power tools, video games, PDA, household devices, e-bikes, security lighting, iPods, and automobiles. As the electronic market grows, it is evident that the lithium battery market will grow exponentially!
In rare cases, lithium batteries can catch fire – often in dramatic ways.
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A black swan event has a very low probability of happening but if it does the consequences are devastating. The black swan event for Texas was the weather and the consequence was catastrophic to their power grid. Prior to the February 2021 snowstorm with freezing temperatures, you must go back to December 1929 to find the last historical Texas snowstorm. The storm lasted for 24 hours dropping 12 inches of snow with freezing temperatures. But they did not have natural gas, windmills and solar panels to worry about like today.
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Green is “In”.
Consumers, retail stores, and corporate policies are all going green.
But just because you have a green technology does not mean you have ZERO risks. Let me give you a couple of examples.
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Even as I write this article, jobs in industries ranging from entertainment and media to manufacturing and medicine are being transformed by artificial intelligence (AI) and its many iterations. Many people don’t even know they are already in a competition with AI and that several facets of their job are already being accomplished by a digital application or intelligent machine. Workers will not be able to outpace these machines simply by working longer hours or moving faster on the assembly line.
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A few weeks ago, I had written about a recent fire at the alkylation unit in Citgo’s Corpus refinery, and raised the question about HF usage. Today, I would like to further delve into the alternate technologies for alklyation and also take this opportunity to summarize feedback I have received from a few readers: Mike Bordeaux, Sujith Panikkar, Menno van der Hauw, and Fabienne Salimi.
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Becoming a risk manager can seem to be more art than science. There’s not a clear pathway from degree to junior risk manager to senior risk manager to CRO (Chief Risk Officer) in the same way that you can chart the progress from freshly minted CPA (Certified Public Accountant) to head of Ernst & Young. (Financial risk management is the exception here as there is usually a clear path there.)
So why is the risk manager career path fuzzy compared to other professions?
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A chemical facility is mandated to have an emergency response plan by OSHA PSM and EPA RMP. An accident in the plant, a hurricane, and a potential terrorist attack are a few scenarios that mandate emergency response and planning. However, there is a vast difference between having an emergency plan and having a plan that works.
Read the remainder of the article to find out if your facility’s emergency plan is an effective one.
[Read more…]Googling ‘what is a risk manager?’ will get you variations on ‘it’s the person who manages that organization’s risks,’ which is a pretty weak answer. It’s certainly not enough to help anyone who’s just starting in the role to understand what they’re supposed to do. Similarly, if someone’s thinking about this as a career, we need a bit more.
So here’s a more detailed answer.
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Process Safety has evolved significantly since the introduction of PSM in 1992. Here are top five challenges facing the process safety community today.
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It’s January 2020. I have just made a pitch to the corporate big-wigs for a way to reduce their real-estate costs (premises including rent and utilities), their corporate travel costs, even their carbon footprint using the latest telephony and collaborative applications. I postulate that they will even see an increase in productivity while improving their employee’s work-life balance; no more one-hour commutes each way.
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Reactive chemicals refer to chemicals that can react with self or with other chemicals or contaminants leading to extremely high reaction rates. The high reaction rates in turn can lead to overpressure within the vessel and possible explosion. As a graduate student, I looked at behavior of reactive chemical hydroxylamine which was involved in an explosion at Concept Sciences facility in Allentown, PA.
Take a look at the following video on how hydroxylamine reacts upon addition of metal solution.
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