Today marks the 30th anniversary of America’s worst commercial nuclear accident at three mile island. Many people remember the accident simply as the “three mile island incident”. What lessons have we learnt from this accident? Are we having better industrial management systems today than were present at that time? Are we better prepared now to … Read more
Modern chemical and hydrocarbon processing plants, oil & gas production facilities, power plants and other similar process plants all have some instrumented systems that ensure functional safety. These are known as Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS for short). This post is about SIS and how you can avoid certain pitfalls while designing them. To those of … Read more
It is now almost three years since the Buncefield oil storage depot explosion took place and finally the authorities have declared, that they will be pressing criminal charges against five companies, ostensibly who have been found guilty of acts of omission. For those of you who do not remember the case, here is a short … Read more
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 … Read more
