Very soon, we will have the 25th anniversary of the Bhopal gas disaster-one of the worst industrial accidents in the world. For the chemical industry worldwide, Bhopal is said to be the wake-up call and turning point that forever changed attitudes towards safety. For those of you who are too young to remember the incident, … Read more
Washington DC, November 4, 2009 – A six-member team from the U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is deploying to the scene of today’s explosion and fire at the Silver Eagle Refinery in Woods Cross, Utah. According to local officials, the explosion in the diesel hydrotreater unit caused damage to homes in the surrounding area and … Read more
Washington, DC, October 7, 2009 – The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) today released a new nine-minute safety video on the combustible dust explosion at the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, which claimed the lives of 14 workers, injured 36, and caused extensive property damage on February 7, 2008. Entitled “Inferno: Dust Explosion … Read more
Ever wonder why Acetylene is classified under Group IIC of the IEC’s explosive material classification system (equivalent to Group A of the NEC material classification)? Why is it classified as much more explosive as compared to say, Methane? Rather than launch into the theory of explosivity and other such things, wouldn’t it be nice to … Read more
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 … Read more
