Friday, August 20th, 2010
Check valves are commonly used in the process industry for preventing back-flow or reverse flow.
Check valves achieve unidirectional flow by means of a mechanical partition - ball, diaphragm, disc.
When to Consider Check Valve Failure?
I can think of at least two occasions when you need to consider check valve failures and design for it.
Overpressure: If ...
Posted in Process Safety, Reactive Chemicals | 2 Comments »
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, July 22nd, 2009
The biodiesel and biofuel industry is demonstrating a disturbing trend of unsafe operations. The biodiesel industry is experiencing one fire/explosion incident EVERY two-and-a-half months. Last Friday, there was an explosion at a biodiesel plant in Chicago injuring two workers. The following video from NBC provides details of the incident.
http://tinyurl.com/lmpug7
According to the video, the explosion ...
Posted in Biofuels, Reactive Chemicals | 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 Process Safety, 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 Fires and explosions, Process Safety, 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 Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Reactive Chemicals | No Comments »
