Friday, October 23rd, 2009
The reactivity of a chemical or a mixture is normally assessed by thermal analysis. Thus the thermal analysis data forms the basis of risk mitigation decisions. What does the thermal analysis data tell us and how to base risk mitigation decisions? How to tell which compositions are more reactive and ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Friday, October 16th, 2009
During process development or plant operation it is often necessary to estimate energy of reaction based on chemical formulae representation alone. This heat of decomposition represents the potential energy that can be released and is therefore a measure of explosion potential. One can therefore envision that estimation of heats reaction ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
How would you answer the following question:
Is refinery A safer than refinery B?
I know a few of you would recommend quantifying risks in each refinery. This will enable us to estimate how many fatalities (on-site and off-site) can occur in the two refineries. We can thus use the predicted ...
Posted in Consequence Modeling, Failure Data, Risk Analysis | 5 Comments »
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
I recently came across a report from European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group (EGIG) titled "Safety Performance Determines The Acceptability of Cross Country Gas Transmission Systems". The paper presents incident data contributed by six European gas transmission operators over a 30-year period of 1970-2001.
An incident within this failure database implies ...
Posted in Failure Data, Fires and explosions, Natural Gas Pipelines | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 3rd, 2009
In an earlier post, I talked about safety in biofuel plants. Today, I would like to share couple of Google Maps (Source: John Astad of Combustible Dust Policy Institute) that graphically display incidents in biodiesel and ethanol plants.Biodiesel Fires and Explosions Map (click to view)According to the map, there were ...
Posted in Biofuels, Fires and explosions | No Comments »
Sunday, April 5th, 2009
Process and portable building siting has attracted further interest following the BP Texas city incident. Because of the proximity of office buildings to chemical processes, it is likely that people inside of a building be subjected to higher risks from process hazards than outdoor personnel.
A facility siting study is used ...
Posted in Consequence Modeling, Process Safety, Siting | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 15th, 2009
Reactivity hazards involve conversion of stored chemical energy of the components into mechanical or heat energy, andit is the uncontrolled release of this stored energy that causes the damage in a reactive chemical incident. The reactivity of a substance is normally assessed by performing calorimetric measurements.
Information about the amount of ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | 2 Comments »
Monday, February 16th, 2009
The presence of certain functional groups is considered an indicator of reactivity. This is the simplest possible reactivity screening method and serves as a guideline for further analysis. For example, chemicals containing the following functional groups can be considered potentially reactive:
-NO2 : organic nitro compounds
-O-O-, -O-OH : organic/inorganic peroxide and ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
Certain chemicals can pose explosion hazards due to their inherent reactivity or interaction with other chemicals or metals. A few years ago the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) had recommended regulating "Reactive Chemicals". This begs the question - what are reactive chemicals?
At the outset let me tell you that it is ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
