Maintaining Process Safety During Tough Economy

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

We appear to be in a global recession – companies all over are struggling to deal with impact of economic slowdown. In an attempt to maintain profits, companies are drastically reducing their spending and also trimming down their workforce. It is anticipated that one-fourth of the employers in the US ...

Safety Forecast for the 21st Century

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

The 20th century was a time of great technological change that forever transformed how we live and work – changes that necessitated the birth and development of the field of Process Safety Management. The early years saw the evolution of mechanization into assembly lines and true industrialization.  Lack of access ...

Using Thermal Analysis to Identify Reactive Chemicals

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 ...

Functional Groups Indicative of Reactive Hazards

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 ...

Reactive Chemical Hazards

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 ...

Introduction to OSHA PSM

Sunday, April 27th, 2008

In 1992, OSHA promulgated the final rule for Process Safety Management (PSM) of Highly Hazardous Chemicals. PSM standard has 14 elements intended to eliminate or mitigate the consequences of releases of highly hazardous chemicals which may be toxic, reactive, flammable, or explosive. The presentation below briefly ...