Meeting Safety Standards in Industrial Plants-what are the costs?

Running an industrial manufacturing plant in these days is tough.  First, you have to meet all the production and cost targets, whereas you are not allowed to hire more hands (due to the slowing economy), or to have any safety violations or incidents, nor any environmental issues. With shrinking budgets and an equally shrinking manpower, do you find it challenging to meet safety standards and norms that are applicable to your plants?

The buzz is yes, most plant managers do find it tough and the reason is not just that the norms are becoming more tougher and stringent by the day-it is also because there are so many of them. Simply put, a typical manufacturing plant is subject to many many more safety norms than your run- of-the- mill -mall or office or other commercial building.  And I have not even started discussing chemical or other hazardous material processing plants. Even a small discrete parts manufacturing plant, has to meet several of these safety regulations. To start with, the plants have to conform to basic work safety, conduct hse safety training (it’s not just displaying a couple of safety training videos to the workmen with some safety posters thrown in for good measure-but carry out practical safety training like firefighting and emergency preparedness training), do safety audits and assessments and so on. Then there are the environmental norms, even for something like disposing waste lubricants and oils. Add on the standards for adequate industrial grade lighting and ventilation, safe distances, speed limits, testing of various equipment like hoses and hoists, machine safety and interlocks and so on. These are to meet the safety norms of the establishment/equipment.

Then there are the human factors safety norms. In addition to PPE and HSE norms, the increasing age of the average industrial worker means that the plants now have to do more often a combination of both health & safety training programs like back safety and preventing workplace injury, due to poor postures and movements.

And if you run a chemical manufacturing plant, then you have to additionally meet safety norms for storage of hazardous materials, explosive atmospheres, static discharges, safety alarms and interlock checking, fire and gas monitoring, boiler safety, burner management systems, emergency shutdown systems and and…….

I wonder if anybody has any figures of the total costs incurred on these. It’s not just the direct dollars and cents spent on safety videos and posters, but also the indirect costs for having special equipment and installations. It would be interesting to know what these percentages are and what these figures are for factories around the world (say in China).

I am of course not at all saying, that these norms should not be met, in fact these SHOULD be strictly adhered to, to protect workers, other stakeholders and society at large, BUT there should also be enough publicity given by the industrial plants themselves, to all this money being spent for a good cause.  At present, the image in the Mainstream media is somewhat rather different; the MSM thinks that these plants are rusty uncompetitive dinosaurs (being no doubt fed by the Wall Street bean counters-we all know how they used to mislead everybody) ; which is not the case at all. If a tycoon donating a few millions to a college can make the headlines, why not an industrial plant spending millions on meeting safety standards?

The figures would bear it out for sure and show these plants in good light to the average Joe. After all a strong economy is built by strong manufacturing plants too, not just MBAs trading pieces of paper (or bits and bytes) in their surreal worlds : )

As usual, comments are welcome!

Are integrated SIS/DCS systems better than standalone SIS DCS systems?

Lately, there have been many launches of new “integrated” control systems, that have both DCS and SIS systems in the same package. For those of you are not familiar with these terms, an SIS is short for “Safety Instrumented System“, which is a special kind of control system that is used for the safety critical parts of process plants, turbomachinery, boilers and so on. Emergency Shutdown Systems (ESD for short), can be considered a subset of the SIS category of control systems.

On the other hand DCS (Distributed Control Systems) are those control systems that are used for normal control and monitoring operations of process plants, oil refineries, oil & gas production platforms, power plants and so on. The DCS is the main system that measures, monitors and controls various process parameters like flow, temperature, pressure and so on.

In the view of the standards bodies (like IEC and ISA), these two systems have to be separate, as the safety systems have to be dedicated to only the safety critical parts of the plant and the garden-variety DCS cannot be said to be robust, fail-safe and sure to operate the safety critical instruments at all times. This distinction between the DCS and SIS, led to separate markets for both types of systems with separate suppliers for both, initially. Thus suppliers like HIMA, ICS Triplex, Triconex, PILZ and so on were the suppliers of these Safety Instrumented Systems, whereas the DCS market belonged to the companies like Emerson, ABB, Honeywell, Yokogawa and so on.

This obviously, meant that now, if a plant had safety critical instruments and controls, it necessarily required a separate SIS, the DCS would not do. This now,  one control room had two control systems, totally different as chalk and cheese. The SIS had  separate power supplies, panels, monitoring stations, separate programming software and of course totally separate hardware. The same Instrument engineer who got allotted to the process plant, had to be adept at both systems simultaneously to do his job well. Plant modifications and changes were a nightmare as any change had to be implemented in both systems.

Making the two systems communicate to each other also proved not so simple.

Hence, all these instrument engineers started wishing for a new deal, whereby both systems could talk to each other seamlessly (even while remaining separate to conform to the standards) and what if they could share a common engineering /programming platform as well?  That would be great!

The DCS vendors sensed this fervent desire and many of them came out with “integrated” systems, where the DCS and SIS controllers are different but part of the same overall system.  Some examples are Emerson’s Delta V with SIS and Siemens Safety Integrated.

What does this mean for the traditional SIS-only vendors like HIMA and Triconex? Have users started switching over to the new integrated systems? Or is it a passing fad? As a system designer, safety manager, instrument engineer or plant manager, which option is better? Separate or integrated? Your comments on this will be welcome.

Sunrise propane explosion-could a little investment in good engineering and safety systems have averted it?

In Aug 2008, there was an explosion in a propane storage facility, located in the midst of a residential area in Toronto. There were two fatalities including that of a firefighter. The explosion was so huge it was very frightening and the subsequent fire was deadlier.

Here’s a video of the event from Youtube.

About 12,500 people had to be evacuated and the damage to property was extensive. The facility is owned by Sunrise Propane Energy Group, who are now facing a class action suit against them after the incident. An investigation into the incident has thrown up some probable causes, one of which is a truck-to-truck transfer of propane, which is not recommended for safety reasons.

Additionally a review of all existing propane installations in Ontario was ordered by the local government and the report is now released. It has reportedly about 40 safety and training recommendations.  One of the recommendations is to review hazard distances and make that information available to the public at large. Unfortunately, most of the “public” everywhere (not just in Ontario) is not at all well informed about hazardous materials, their properties, safe distances and  how to handle related emergencies.

(In fact, the general lack of easily available information related to hazardous area classification was one of the reasons why Abhisam Software, decided to come out with a download version of its popular hazardous area instrumentation training course at an affordable $99 price).

Well, coming back to the propane incident, it just shows how seriously all companies need to take storage and handling of hazardous materials, in case they wish to avoid fatalities, losses to property and open ended class action suits having potential liabilities of millions of dollars.  A little investment in good engineering practices, safe designs with adequate safety margins, investment in training of operators and maintenance staff would have gone a long way in avoiding these huge costs later on. I believe there are a lot of reasons for the general deterioration of these standards in many companies, which include the following

• the mad cost-cutting of the last decade under the influence of the wall street gang (whom we now know to be thieves in disguise)
• the blind acceptance of these practices, by all and sundry in the management (along with some  fat, it cut out a lot of the muscle and brain too)
• the overwhelming desire to match the “China price”
• the “profits before safety” philosophy-in fact the “profits before anything” philosophy
• the demolition of in-house engineering talent under the influence of again the same wall street  ( they were overheads you see, not engineers with brains)

But I will stop my rant now and allow you to mull over all this.

BTW I wonder if the bean counters at these companies have understood all this in the right context (the importance of engineering, training and safety).

Comments are always welcome.

Not doing a gas test before welding is criminal negligence

I wonder why many plant owners & managers cannot do some simple things to prevent accidents and save innocent workers’ lives?  Shockingly, in many of the recent accidents, that have been reported as “welding accidents”, the root cause is not doing a “gas test” before starting the job.  As all of you, who are familiar with the oil & gas, petrochemical and related industries know, it is essential to do a “gas test” (in other words, use a gas monitor to check the presence of explosive or flammable gases) before allowing “hot work” in any area in the plant.  Apparently, this simple fact is not known or plainly ignored by many owners/operators of such facilities.

The recently released US Chemical Safety Board investigation into the Jackson, Mississippi oilfield accident,  clearly indicates that the  owner company failed to do this basic test, before allowing workers to do the welding work. The result was a very predictable explosion, with an unfortunate fatality too.  This,  in a developed country, supposedly industrially advanced, like the US of A; we’re not talking about some Timbuctoo in some remote corner of the world.

The latest such incident is an oilfield explosion in Ohio.  Just about three weeks ago there was another similar accident in Honolulu. The US Chemical Safety board has sent a team to the site for an investigation into the Ohio explosion ( the Honolulu investigation is still on) and we will know only later whether this too, was the result of not conducting a “flammable gas test” at the site before allowing such work to start.

I wonder whether the managements are incompetent or plain negligent or ignorant about the hazards of allowing hot work, in areas known to have flammable vapors and gases.  This is because explosive gas monitors are not at all expensive , easily available everywhere and are also pretty easy to operate.  Training is available in many forms, including an excellent e-learning course on Gas Monitors, as well as from other sources such as vendors.

It is time that the authorities made it loud and clear to all owner/operators that there will be zero tolerance for such negligent acts. I understand that the US Chemical Safety Board can only make recommendations, not issue penalties, so this has to be done by some other federal agency.

As always your comments on this issue are welcome!

Cost of NOT preventing corrosion in a gas pipeline - $ 4 billion!

On June 3, 2008, there was a large explosion in a natural gas processing station on Varanus island near Western Australia. The investigation report that was released last week, points to poor maintenance as being the leading cause of the accident. It seems that the company that maintained the pipeline and associated infrastructure neglected maintenance for over 15 years, until the day , the pipes became so thin due to corrosion that the gas leaked and it all went off with a bang!

The report talks about the main causes of the blast as “ineffective anti-corrosion coating of a gas pipeline due to damage or disbondment of the pipeline”, “ineffective cathodic protection of the wet-dry transition zone of the beach crossing section of the pipeline,” and “ineffective inspection and monitoring by Apache.” (Apache Energy is the company that owns the installation).

Fortunately no fatalities were reported, but the resulting disruptions may have caused losses of up to $ 4 billion and there is a question mark on who is liable. Gas supplies to the entire Western Australian region were cut back by a third, resulting in shutdowns and outages.

If this is the callous way in which managements treat their assets in good times, ( the energy industry is having a pretty good time now), I wonder what will become of good maintenance and safety standards during tough economic times that are seen in the days ahead?

This is what happens when you let the bean counters and corporate finance guys run amok and ruin perfectly good manufacturing/processing companies. I am sure all of you- manufacturing, process and safety professionals who have experienced this will agree with me, as most of us have gone through similar experiences in the past few years.

The mantra of cost-cutting at any cost, has proved to be a BIG failure and is downright reckless and irresponsible behavior towards everybody-ordinary shareholders (NOT the ones who write ESOP checks for themselves) , frontline employees (NOT the fancy headquarters staff but those on the frontline who run the operations), the larger business community , the surrounding environment and local communities.  We have all seen the bean counters’ breathtaking, virtuoso performance on Wall Street by now, it is up to the engineers and technical types (who I suppose have far more IQ and common sense than their glamorous “corporate finance” types of guys) to take back control of companies and run things in a saner (and safer way).

Amen!

Here’s a video of the original incident (from Live Leak)

Fire and explosion at Bayer Cropscience facility-W.Virgina

On 29th Aug 2008, there was a large fire and explosion at a Bayer Cropscience facility near Charleston, W. Virginia.  A team from the US Chemical Safety baord reportedly visited the site after the accident, but they have not released any investigation report as of now. The exact cause of the accident remains unknown, but here is some raw video footage, sourced from the citizen news site liveleak.com

There were unconfirmed reports of a tank that stored effluents and chemical waste from different streams exploding and causing the fire, but much remains unknown.

This is another gray area. Many times, the companies who process effluents may have no idea what kind of mixtures and reactions could occur between the effluents themselves, since the proportions may vary from time to time. Also who classifies under which category such unknown waste material goes? For example if you are storing Acetone than, it is classified under Group D (Hazardous Area Classification), similarly how does one decide under which category such unknown ( and possibly explosive and/or toxic waste mixtures) should go?  Any thoughts on this would be welcome.

Also the emergency response wasn’t much to feel comfortable about, as per reports in some local newspapers and media.

New wireless instruments can improve safety monitoring

There is now yet another generation of instruments on the market-wireless! The developments in instruments are faster than what a traditional chemicals manufacturing plant was used to. First we had pneumatic/hydraulic & mechanical instruments, then analog instruments, then digital “smart” instruments, fieldbuses and now wireless. However, in this case these may prove to be very useful for safety monitoring.

How? Recall that in most plants, safety valves and rupture disks are devices that are not monitored remotely (except perhaps if there are CCTV cameras installed around them). Thus other than a bang (when the rupture disk goes off), there is no apparent indication. If you cannot hear it, nothing can be done.

There is now however a way, with the advent of wireless safety relief valves and wireless rupture disks. These devices have a small wireless transmitter mounted inside them, so that you can remotely monitor their status in far-away control rooms;suddenly they are now visible on a plant’s DCS or a SCADA system.

Isn’t that great? Coupled with some newer instruments that can be mounted on safety showers and eyewash fountains (that transmit a digital signal wirelessly when operated), it will lead to a greater degree of safety, even in older plants (as presumably one can retrofit the older relief devices and showers with these wireless transmitters).

Have any of you any experience in such a wireless safety instrument implementation?  We will be glad to hear from you about your actual experiences. Please respond through the comments form (look for the link near the title of this post).

Can using Gas detectors simplify hazardous area classification?

Is it possible that if we use gas detectors to continuosly monitor the explosive limits in a classified (hazardous) location, we could manage it better?

Of course! If you recall, the area classification concept itself is based on the amount of time in a year, an explosive gas mixture (or a combustible dust-air mixture) is likely to be present in a given hazardous area. Thus a Divsion 1 classified location will have more incidences of explosive mixtures being present in a year than Division 2. Alternatively in the IEC system we have three Zones, which are Zone 0, Zone 1 and Zone 2. If you recall the definitions, Zone 0 is a place where hazardous gas/vapor and air mixtures are likely to be present for more than 100 hours in a year.

Why I am I again drumming in definitions that all of you already know? Because if you read the above carefully, it talks of a gas or vapor-air mixture as “likely” to be present.

Well, if you install an explosive gas detector in the area, you could actually measure if any such mixtures are actually present. Not likelihoods, but real occurences, if any. This means that from the uncertainty of likelihoods we are now talking about actual hours of explosive gas or vapor mixtures being present.

This is a big leap from earlier years and could lead to a revolutionary change in how hazardous areas are classified in the future.

Read more about it here.

Gas Detector calibration & testing-ideal frequency

In a typical large chemical manufacturing plant or facility, typically there may be hundreds of gas detectors and gas monitors that warn operators about lurking hazards related to leaking chemicals and vapors. These detectors are installed during the plant startup or possibly are added after a few incidents or as the result of HAZOP or safety studies. So far so good. How do you, as the plant engineer or plant manager or the safety manager, ensure that they continue to work as intended?

Well, you calibrate them or just “bump test” them with a known gas mixture in a gas bottle. Fine, but after how many months or years?

How often should you check, whether your installed gas monitors & gas detectors are working OK? In order words, what should be an ideal calibration frequency for these instruments?  This is one of the questions that many engineers and technicians ask us, after they learn about gas monitors (from our excellent e-learning course on gas detectors and gas monitors).

Nobody seems to have a common answer.

Some experts suggest every year, some every half year and others, every quarter. So who is right?  Some may feel the more the frequency, the better. However, the catch is, that in most electrochemical type gas detectors, every time a calibration or even a bump test is carried out, a small amount of the electrolyte is depleted. This means that the useful life of the gas detector gets reduced , the more you test it.  It may so happen, that on a particular test (say the fifth one on the same sensor since its installation), almost all the electrolyte will get depleted. However because sufficient electrolyte was present during the test, the detector will pass out with flying colors. BUT, suppose the next day there is a gas leak AND the electrolyte is now depleted, the instrument that was just declared healthy yesterday will fail in the actual emergency !

Does this bother you? It should. Probably some manufacturer will start indicating the level of useful electrolyte left (there are some models that have this, but I am not sure) or there is some kind of other sensor diagnostic available, but in the vast majority of these detectors, it does not seem to be present.

What about the catalytic combustion type? Well, frequently exposing them may to %LEL gas mixtures may cause damage of the bead (repeated explosions taking place on the bead) and could render them ineffective in an actual gas leak.

The only types that can escape this “destruction by calibration” seem to be the semiconductor and the optical/infrared types, that may be unaffected by frequent exposures to gases to which they are sensitive. Does it mean that we should replace all of the electrochemical types and the catalytic combustion types with IR sensors and semiconductors?  Not really practical as they are much more expensive than the electrochemical type and the catalytic combustion type.

So do we use the “lightbulb replacement method”, that used to be present in many factories in the 80s (for those who have forgotten about it, here is a refresher-some smart guy had calculated that replacing all light bulbs-even the working ones-every six months was cheaper than replacing only those bulbs that failed, due yto the inventory carrying costs, the payroll costs of the “light-bulb-changers” ,etc, etc).

Do we simply replace all the electrochemical sensors and catalytic combustion sensors every two years? Any thoughts on this issue?

Please use the comments form below.

(P.S.   BTW if you wish to know more about gas detection or have a good training course on gas monitors, why don’t you download our excellent e-learning course ? )

Static Electricity Hazards-Mere bonding and grounding may not be enough!

Continuing with our series on the US Chemical Safety Board accident investigation videos, we discuss today the most insidous and hidden hazards in the chemical processing industry-Static Electricity. Why is static electricity so hazardous in chemical plants?  Simply because many inflammable liquids (like most solvents), tend to accumulate static charges on their surface, especially  when the liquid becomes turbulent. Static charges can then cause sparking and a single spark can then ignite a fire or cause an explosion of a very high magnitude. The consequences can be frequently disastrous.

Prevention of static buildup is done by bonding the metallic parts of all the liquid carrying equipment to each other (known as “bonding”) and then tying these to a single earth point (known as “grounding”). Together this technique is known as “bonding and grounding” and this helps the static charge that is built up on the liquid surface, to flow to the earth (ground), thereby preventing any sparking.

This is why workers are careful to carry out “bonding and grounding” while emptying the contents of a typical tank truck into a storage tank. The question is whether these measures alone can prevent static buildup entirely?

The answer is no. Surprised? Watch the video below. I”ll bet you never thought about “bonding and grounding” inside a storage tank!

Our conclusion? Safety is ensured by multiple and diverse layers of protection. Simply depending on a single protection mechanism does not ensure safety. Thus relying on just the “bonding and grounding” scheme did not help, as shown in the incident.

Hence the plant management should have thought of using Nitrogen blanketing or purging, as an additional layer of protection. Alternatively, a non contact level measurement technique like a Radar level gauge could have been used. Care should be taken to ensure however that the instrument is suitable for installation in a hazardous area, most likely  Zone 0.

Use Gas Detectors to improve safety-lessons from an industrial accident

This post shows how easy it can be, to build-in safety into your plant, by using the right kind of gas detector. Continuing our “Case study” series, we show below how a simple gas detector, had it been installed, could have easily prevented a major industrial catastrophe.

The video below show the US Chemical Safety Board accident investigation of an explosion, that rocked the industrial facility of Sterigenics International, Ontario, California. Apparently, among many things that went wrong, one glaring fact that stands out was the non use of gas monitors in the facility. Even a simple gas detector based on catalytic combustion principles, that could have measured hazardous levels of explosive gas, could have prevented the incident.

Gas monitors and gas detectors can be used very effectively in preventing such kinds of accidents, to a large extent. Ignorance about usage can no longer be a reason, since there is an excellent training course on gas detectors now available. This downloadable course on gas monitors, will enable you to understand all about safety concepts like TWA & TLV, different methods of gas detection,  how gas monitors work, how to select and install a gas monitor that works and how to calibrate and maintain them so that they continue to maintain your plant in a safe state.

Well, enough on that, I am sure you will check it out. Meanwhile, here’s the video. Very graphic but also very illuminating. View it and draw your own conclusions. As always, comments are welcome!