What is LOPA? In this short LOPA tutorial, we will understand the Layer of Protection Analysis technique or LOPA for short. So what does one mean by it? LOPA is used mainly in the process industries as a risk assessment tool. Every industrial process has a degree of risk associated with running it and this … Read more
You must have come across the term HAZOP very often lately, as it has been in the news more often. HAZOP is an acronym which is short for Hazard and Operability study and it was first introduced many decades ago by Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) of UK. ICI no longer exists today as ICI (various … Read more
A major fire broke out at the North Star Foods plant in St.Charles, Minn on Friday, April 17, 2009, forcing the evacuation of nearly 3000 residents, reports the Winona Daily News. A huge fire at the meat processing plant with a towering plume of black smoke, visible nearly 10 miles away, caused panic in the … Read more
This is the question that many people ask themselves. There are so many standards and practices, so different from each other. You have the Class, Division & Group classification in North America and the Zone and Group system in Europe, Asia and Australia. The NEC also talks about Zones in Article 505 and there is … Read more
Update: The latest fatal accident involving Nitrogen occurred at a Georgia food processing plant today. Read about it here. We in the industry, generally are led to believe that Nitrogen, an inert gas, is by association with the word inert , also “safe”. This information resides somewhere deep inside of our subconscious mind, where we … Read more
