Risk Analysis and Control for Industrial Processes - Gas, Oil and Chemicals - Hans J Pasman

Risk Analysis and Control for Industrial Processes - Gas, Oil and Chemicals (eBook)

A System Perspective for Assessing and Avoiding Low-Probability, High-Consequence Events

Hans J Pasman (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
458 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-12-800912-3 (ISBN)

Risk Analysis and Control for Industrial Processes - Gas, Oil and Chemicals provides an analysis of current approaches for preventing disasters, and gives readers an overview on which methods to adopt.

The book covers safety regulations, history and trends, industrial disasters, safety problems, safety tools, and capital and operational costs versus the benefits of safety, all supporting project decision processes.

Tools covered include present day array of risk assessment, tools including HAZOP, LOPA and ORA, but also new approaches such as System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA), Blended HAZID, applications of Bayesian data analytics, Bayesian networks, and others. The text is supported by valuable examples to help the reader achieve a greater understanding on how to perform safety analysis, identify potential issues, and predict the likelihood they may appear.

Presents new methods on how to identify hazards of low probability/high consequence events
Contains information on how to develop and install safeguards against such events, with guidance on how to quantify risk and its uncertainty, and how to make economic and societal decisions about risk
Demonstrates key concepts through the use of examples and relevant case studies

TEES Research Professor, Mary Kay O'Connor Process Safety Center, Texas A&M University, Texas, USA., Emeritus Professor, Chemical Risk Management of the Delft University of Technology, and associated member of the Dutch Council for Life Environment and Infrastructure in the Netherlands.
Professor Pasman graduated in Chemical Technology at Delft University of Technology in 1961, and finished a Doctor's thesis in 1964 while working for Shell. He joined the Dutch Organisation for Applied Research, TNO, in 1965, initiating and performing research in reactive materials, gas, dust and energetic material explosions, investigation of industrial accidents and risk analysis, while also managing organizational units.
He has been a member of the Working Party on Loss Prevention and Safety Promotion in the Process Industries since 1972, and chairman from 1986-2004. In this latter capacity he was instrumental in founding the European Process Safety Centre in 1992. He has also been chairman of the International Group on Unstable Substances (IGUS) for 10 years, of the European Study Group on Risk Analysis (1980-1985), and of a NATO Group on Explosives (1982-1992). At the Delft University of Technology he led a multinational project on gas explosion fundamentals at elevated pressures and temperatures (2003-2008). In 2007 he co-organized a NATO advanced research workshop on Resilience of Cities to Terrorists and other Threats. From 2004-2012 he was a Member of the Dutch national Advisory Council on Hazardous Substances.

Risk Analysis and Control for Industrial Processes - Gas, Oil and Chemicals provides an analysis of current approaches for preventing disasters, and gives readers an overview on which methods to adopt. The book covers safety regulations, history and trends, industrial disasters, safety problems, safety tools, and capital and operational costs versus the benefits of safety, all supporting project decision processes. Tools covered include present day array of risk assessment, tools including HAZOP, LOPA and ORA, but also new approaches such as System-Theoretic Process Analysis (STPA), Blended HAZID, applications of Bayesian data analytics, Bayesian networks, and others. The text is supported by valuable examples to help the reader achieve a greater understanding on how to perform safety analysis, identify potential issues, and predict the likelihood they may appear. Presents new methods on how to identify hazards of low probability/high consequence events Contains information on how to develop and install safeguards against such events, with guidance on how to quantify risk and its uncertainty, and how to make economic and societal decisions about risk Demonstrates key concepts through the use of examples and relevant case studies

Chapter 2

Regulation to Safeguard against High-Consequence Industrial Events

Abstract

The development of legislation/regulation to control the risks of major industrial hazards in the United States and Europe is summarized in this chapter. This has been a process of several decades, and certainly in the beginning each major step-up followed a catastrophic accident event. Environmental pollution provided the first impulse to regulate, followed by laws to protect workers and the public against risks of fires, explosions, and spread of toxic clouds. These regulations led to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's Process Safety Management and the Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Management Program rule in the United States and the Seveso Directives in Europe. With the introduction of safety distances and risk assessment, siting became an issue, and in Europe given a hazard potential, various approaches to land use planning were institutionalized. After major accidents offshore regulation followed. An optimum is sought between prescriptive and goal-based regulation. Inspection remains a weak point. With the Globally Harmonized System, worldwide progress was achieved in substance hazard classification.

Keywords

Hazard classification; Land use planning; Major industrial hazards; Offshore safety; Safety regulation; Site inspection issues; Stationary source siting

Lock the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Old English proverb

Summary

The United States and the European Union have been the pioneers of industrial safety. Because of the accessible language in which their regulations to prevent industrial disasters and to mitigate their effects is conveyed, regulatory developments in these two regions will be briefly described. The history of regulation on major hazards in both the United States (US) and European Union (EU) is one of stepwise development and improvement, unfortunately often when governments were prompted to act in response to major incidents.

The evolution of process safety regulations in the US starting after the Bhopal, India, disaster in 1984 will be summarized first, although this was some years before industrial hazardous materials regulation had been proved necessary to combat large-scale environmental pollution. An important law issued by the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in 1992 is 29 CFR 1910.119, the Process Safety Management (PSM) rule, which forms the basis for identifying hazards and taking technical and organizational measures to control the risks. This rule was instigated by a number of major accidents in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s, amongst others the Phillips Petroleum ethylene vapor cloud explosion at Pasadena, Texas in 1989, which caused 23 fatalities and 232 injuries.a This PSM regulation was followed in 1996 by the law 40 CFR Part 68 Risk Management Plan issued by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This latter law must be used to specify minimum safe separation distances to residential housing and vulnerable entities such as nursing homes, schools, or hospitals, as well as sensitive receptors (e.g., parks). Such calculations shall be made both for a worst-case scenario and for an alternative owner/operator chosen scenario. The calculations are auditable, publicly available, and shall be locally discussed. Incidents must be reported to a delegated authority.

In the European Union, high-impact low-probability events are called major hazards. The Seveso incident (near Milan, Italy) dispersed dioxin into the local atmosphere and environment as a result of pressure relief venting following a reactor runaway accident. This led to drafting the Seveso Directives, which are intended both to prevent major hazards and to protect workers and citizens. The first Directive was published in 1982 (82/501/EC), with subsequent major improvements in 1996 (96/82/EC) and 2012 (2012/18/EU). The Directives require submission of a satisfactory safety report prior to the issue of a license to operate, in which the operator demonstrates that “all that is necessary has been done to prevent major accidents.” Reporting of incidents is mandatory. The Directives contain paragraphs that deal with land use planning, domino effects, and inspection. The implementation of a directive in the various EU member states is mandatory but can result in significantly different laws within the EU as the same objectives can be achieved in different ways. As an example, the different approaches to safety zoning in land use planning, or in American terms stationary source siting, will be examined. We can distinguish two main categories:

• A so-called deterministic or consequence-based approach that regards only the maximum severity of consequences (so-called endpoints) as criteria for the separation distance beyond which people are safe (Germany). This resembles the US approach.

• A probabilistic or risk-based approach in which, besides the consequence severity of an event, the probability of that event is also taken into account. This approach therefore must include directional influences on the consequences, for example, as a result of wind, atmospheric stability, or topology of the local environment. Decision criteria on which a safety report is accepted/rejected are therefore also probability based (e.g., UK, France, the Netherlands).

Both approaches place substantial emphasis on applying risk-reduction measures and high safety standards and are intended to achieve the same ends. Germany, for instance, rejects the probabilistic approach because of the large uncertainties associated with outcomes.

Of course, if sufficient space is available for land use planning, the ideal near zero-risk to population approach could be achieved by very large separation distances. Unfortunately, this is impractical in many societies and countries. As an alternative, it would be convenient to work with generic safety distances depending on certain characteristics of the type of activity. The contrast between the two approaches mentioned above is less distinct than might be imagined. The deterministic approach (Germany) is now generally based not on a relatively unlikely, worst-case scenario of leak hole area but also permits consideration of a more likely, credible alternative. This approach introduces an element of plausibility. On the other hand, the probabilistic approach has introduced a perimeter (France) or a safety zone borderline (NL), enclosing an area within which risks are assessed, while outside of which risks are ignored. Obviously, the more that availability of space is restricted given that economic activity requires the presence of industry, the more the probabilistic approach becomes favored.

Risk communication is an important aspect of risk. In the US and France the population in the vicinity of a plant is most directly involved in the discussion about risk-reduction measures and in decision making. In France, a group that represents the workforce is required to be included in the discussion. This inclusion will undoubtedly make the process less simple, but it is anticipated that openness and participation will enhance employee motivation and better balance the risk versus the economic interest.

Due to the enormous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of the blowout of the Macondo well in April 2010, regulation in the US and in Europe was reformed to cover process safety in offshore operations. (A brief overview of this regulation will also be given.)

The chapter will continue with a discussion of requirements for transport of hazardous materials and the Globally Harmonized System (GHS) for classification and communication of substance hazards. The GHS is relatively new and relevant worldwide as chemicals are ubiquitous and crucial for the economies of so many countries. Brief attention is given to some of its important concepts such as hazard classes and categories, signal words, and labeling. Finally, future directions are discussed in which a plea is made for improving test methods, for considering the pros and cons of “goal setting” and “prescriptive” regulation, and the necessity of improved inspection regimes and of living up to both the spirit and the letter of regulations.

2.1. Some historical landmarks of main themes of regulation in the United States and European Union

The main themes of regulation in the United States and in Europe run in parallel, but there are many differences in the details and the timing when new laws were implemented. The goal, however, is identical: protection of the workers and citizens against hazards and risks created by operations of the processing industry and associated storage and transportation of hazardous materials. Instead of the US designation “hazardous materials,” in Europe the wording “dangerous substances” is often used. Table 2.1 provides an overview of the timeline of regulatory landmarks.

The history of worker protection started much earlier than that of safeguarding the population and the environment. Concepts of occupational health and safety, backed up by legislation, first developed in the middle of the nineteenth century and became well established after World War II. This was not just protection from acute or chronic harm due to toxic chemicals but also harm resulting from environmental factors such as dust or excessive noise. There was also the need, for instance, to protect workers from moving machinery and falls from height. Occupational hygiene, also called...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	14.6.2015
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Chemie ► Technische Chemie
	Technik ► Bauwesen
	Technik ► Umwelttechnik / Biotechnologie
ISBN-10	0-12-800912-8 / 0128009128
ISBN-13	978-0-12-800912-3 / 9780128009123

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