Friday, October 9th, 2009
Evaluation of reactive chemical hazards can range from simple paper-based calculations to highly complex testing and modeling. This post is aimed to help you formulate a systematic strategy for evaluating reactive chemical hazards in your facility. I will divide the various approaches in three tiers - simple to complex.
Tier I . Theoretical Screening
At the ...
Posted in Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Monday, October 5th, 2009
Interesting post by John "Dust Explosion" Astad.
Where's the Beef? Previous Training Material
Posted in Regulations, Training | No Comments »
Friday, October 2nd, 2009
Recently, members of Congress sent a letter to OSHA chief, Jordan Barab, to expand PSM standard to address reactive chemicals.
Reactive chemicals have gained increasing attention since the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) released its report on reactive chemicals in 2002. Now I have been working in the area of reactive chemicals ...
Posted in OSHA PSM, Reactive Chemicals, Regulations | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009
We have been burning wood since days of the caveman. But did you know that wood can also explode?
Logs of wood will not explode but fine dust can lead to a fire and explosion. Let us see why.
As the size of combustible particle reduces there are two major factors that ...
Posted in Dust Explosions, Fires and explosions, Process Safety | 1 Comment »
Monday, August 17th, 2009
Reactive chemicals refer to chemicals that can react with self or with other chemicals or contaminants leading to extremely high reaction rates. The high reaction rates in turn can lead to overpressure within the vessel and possible explosion. As a graduate student, I looked at behavior of reactive chemical hydroxylamine ...
Posted in Process Safety, Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
Monday, June 22nd, 2009
According to a recent report (Aug. 2008) from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is not in compliance with its statutory mandates. The CSB is an independent federal agency charged with investigating industrial chemical accidents and has been in operation since 1998. GAO report states that ...
Posted in Incident Investigation, Process Safety, Regulations | 1 Comment »
Sunday, May 17th, 2009
OSHA is currently working on regulation for preventing dust explosions.
The first reported dust explosion was in 1890 in a sugar mill in Chicago. According to the CSB investigation, dust explosion has resulted in 130 deaths and 780 injuries since 1980. According to Combustible Dust Institute research of news reports, there ...
Posted in Dust Explosions, Fires and explosions, Regulations | 2 Comments »
Sunday, April 27th, 2008
Chemical industry has evolved dramatically since the first sulfuric acid manufacturing plant was established in the 18th century. Modern day chemical plant is an engineering marvel producing valuable chemicals necessary for the societal progress. Although safe for the most part, chemical industries have witnessed a few significant accidents in the ...
Posted in OSHA PSM, Process Safety, Regulations, Risk Management | No Comments »
