Chemical process safety operating procedures

Process safety refers to the application of engineering, science, and human factors to the design and operation of chemical processes and systems. The primary purpose of process safety is to prevent injuries, fatalities, fires, explosions, and unexpected releases of hazardous materials. Process safety focuses on the individual chemical processes and operational procedures associated with these systems. A process safety analysis is used to establish safe operating parameters, instrument interlocks, alarms, process design, and start-up, shutdown, and emergency procedures. Process safety programs cannot completely eliminate risk they can only control or reduce those risks. 

Introduction Review and audit processes are used in the chemical process industry to evaluate, examine, and verify the design of process equipment, operating procedures, and management systems. These processes assure compliance with company standards and guidelines as well as government regulations. Reviews and audits can encompass the areas of process and personnel safety, environmental and industrial hygiene protection, quality assurance, maintenance procedures, and so on. 

CCPS G-32. Guidelines for "Writing Effective Operating Maintenance Procedures. American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Center for Chemical Process Safety, New York. 

Until about the second World War chemical processes were developed in an evolutionary way by building plants of increasing size and capacity. The capacity of the next plant in the series was determined by a scale-up factor that depended mainly upon experience gained from scale-ups of similar plants. Due to a lack of predictive models for chemical processes and operations, processes had to be scaled up in many small steps. This procedure was very expensive and the results unreliable. Therefore, large safety margins were incorporated in scale-up procedures, which often resulted in a significant unintended overcapacity of the designed plant. 

Management systems for chemical process safety are comprehensive sets of policies, procedures, and practices designed to ensure that barriers to major incidents are in place, in use, and effective. The management systems serve to integrate process safety concepts into ongoing activities of everyone involved in operations— from the chemical process operator to the chief executive officer. 

Pick up a dictionary and find the entry for procedure. One definition is a particular course or mode of action. A simple statement, but to procedure users, writers, and managers concerned with process safety, the word procedure impUes much more. The Center for Chemical Process Safety s approach to Process Safety Management relies on written procedures to document both hands-on operations and maintenance activities as well as to describe the Process Safety Management S5retem itself. This book was written to help select and implement actions that will... 

The Guidelines for Hazard Evaluation Procedures, Second Edition, issued by the Center for Chemical Process Safety, includes a checklist-questionnaire for chemical operations that fills 45 pages. 

Full Scale Production—Reevaluation of chemical reaction hazards Newly revealed reactivity hazards from plant operations Management of changes Update of safety procedures as required Ongoing interaction of process safety with engineering, production, economic, andcommercial aspects of the process... 

Document Chemical Reactivity Risks and Management Decisions Process Knowledge and Documentation Process Risk Management Process Safety Information Process Hazard Analysis Operating Procedures Operational Control... 

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