Guest Post by Bill Pomfret (first posted on CERM ® RISK INSIGHTS – reposted here with permission)
All this knowledge, passed on for our Engineers, is of little use unless it reaches the right people. The individuals and institutions which educate the safety engineers and who will be responsible for the design and operation of plants handling hazardous materials have a duty to make their students aware of the hazards and at least to make a start in gaining competence in handling them.
As elsewhere in engineering, computers are in wide-spread use in the design of process plants, where computer aided design (CAD) covers physical properties, flow sheeting, piping and instrument diagrams, unit operations and plant layout. There is increasing use of computers for failure data retrieval and analysis, reliability and availability studies, fault tree analysis and consequence modelling, while more elusive safety expertise is being captured by computer-based expert systems.
The subject of this article is the chemical and process industries, but the process aspects of related industries, notably nuclear power and oil and gas platforms are briefly touched on. The process industries themselves are continually changing. In the last decade one of the main changes has been increased emphasis on products such as pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals made by batch processes, which have their own hazards.
Within the past few years, the chemical and petroleum industries have undergone considerable changes. Process conditions such as pressure and temperature have become more severe. The concentrations of stored energy have increased. Plants have grown and are often single stream. Storage has been reduced and interlinking with other plants has increased. The response of the process is often faster. The plant contains very large items of equipment. The scale of possible fire, explosion or toxic release has grown and so has the area which might be affected by such events, especially outside the works boundary.
These factors have greatly increased the potential for loss both in human and in economic terms. This is clear both from the increasing concern of the industry and its insurers and from the historical loss statistics.
The intense industrial development observed during the last decades also generated a significant increase of transportation flows of hazmat through roads, railways, rivers, seas, and pipelines. Unlike fixed plants, hazmat transport is less controllable because it is not set in a ‘rigid’ location, but in a dynamic scenario influenced by numerous factors. Considering that transportation of hazmat creates numerous opportunities for the occurrence of accidental releases due to traffic accidents, train derailments, shipwreck at sea, equipment failures and human errors, among other causes, is important also to investigate past accidents in the hazmat transportation sector. Many serious transport-related accidents have been reported over the last years, with incidence in road (e.g., cistern trucks), railways (train wagons), but also in pipeline systems. analyzed historical data concerning hazmat transportation incidents reported in USA by transportation mode, Pipelines are generally considered as the safest way to transport hazardous substances, yet this mode of transportation has the potential for creating major-accident hazards and reported accidents over the last decades One of the worst accidents occurred in (Nigeria) in 1998 where a blast from a leaking petrol pipeline killed 701 persons. Concerning railway transportation modes, in addition to the previously described Viareggio, another recent reported event with a high number of fatalities is the train accident occurred in Helsingin, Belgium,
Accidents involving hazmat are also reported in seaports every year. According to Pomfret, hazmat gas releases are the most common type of accident in seaports, followed by fires, explosions, and gas clouds, similarly to petrochemical industry trends. In the same study showed that, from a total of 471 accidents inside ports areas, 83% during the last 20 years and 59% in the past decade. An increasing trend regarding the frequency of occurrence in port activity and sea transport of hazmat has been observed over the last decades.
With similar importance is the investigation of MIA involving ‘domino’ effects, i.e., accidents where a release of hazmat in a process unit becomes the trigger and will damage one or more other process units, causing a chain of additional accident events Domino accidents may start from an initial incident, with fires being the most frequent cause in industrial installations, followed by explosions and gas clouds. Several authors have analyzed relevant aspects involved in domino accidents, in particular their frequency, likelihood, and consequences e.g., For instance, Pomfret statistically analyzed a set of chemical accidents showing different characteristic patterns in terms of fatalities caused and domino effects likelihood depending on the type of substances involved. More recently, CIA analyzed the main features and causes of domino accidents sequences in terms of types of industries and substances of past recent events. The analysis showed that the most frequent causes of domino accidents in process/storage plants and in the transportation of hazmat are external events and mechanical failure. Storage areas and process establishments are by far the most commons settings for domino accidents. Moreover, flammable materials were involved in most accidents involving explosions and fires.
In addition to the statistical investigation of ‘typical’ historical events, it is vital to examine spatial distribution of such events at regional, national, or international level. Among other studies, the EEA analyzed the spatial distribution of reported technological events, by type occurred during the period. shows the spatial distribution and type of accidents reported EU-wide between 2008 and 2016.
The distribution of disasters caused by technological accidents is not uniform in the various EU member states. As expected, most of MIAs are concentrated in the countries with the highest number of hazardous industrial activities and it is possible to verify that France and Germany reported by far the highest number of accidents, followed by the U.K.
Bio:
Dr. Bill Pomfret of Safety Projects International Inc who has a training platform, said, “It’s important to clarify that deskless workers aren’t after any old training. Summoning teams to a white-walled room to digest endless slides no longer cuts it. Mobile learning is quickly becoming the most accessible way to get training out to those in the field or working remotely. For training to be a successful retention and recruitment tool, it needs to be an experience learner will enjoy and be in sync with today’s digital habits.”
Every relationship is a social contract between one or more people. Each person is responsible for the functioning of the team. In our society, the onus is on the leader. It is time that employees learnt to be responsible for their actions or inaction, as well. And this takes a leader to encourage them to work and behave at a higher level. Helping employees understand that they also need to be accountable, visible and communicate what’s going on
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