Chemical processing industry work environment

The chemical processing industry operates with a variety of work shifts that include 8- andl 2-hour rotating shifts. Some smaller facilities shut down over the weekend or even at night however, the most common work schedule is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Process technicians work in an all-weather work environment that is, they must complete work assignments during a variety of weather conditions. 

From 1950 to 1972, the government continued to draft large numbers of process technicians into the military. Most companies worked with employees who had been drafted and allowed them to return to their Jobs after their tours of duty. Some companies counted an employee s service time in the military as uninterrupted company service time. This group of employees greatly influenced the development of the military-type environment found in the chemical processing industry. 

In chemical process industries there is a growing demand for an improvement of the design process in order to obtain better plants in shorter development cycles. Existing software tools support only isolated parts of the design process. A sustainable improvement of this software support can only be achieved by an integration of tools into an environment combined with the support of work processes (Marquardt and NagI, 1998). 

Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) has been in existence for many years particularly in the nuclear industry. Nowadays, QRA is widely used in aerospace, chemical process industries, petrochemical and manufacturing plants even if its detailed application can result very troublesome, time-consuming and expensive. In order to perform a quantitative risk analysis, reliability data are needed. These data have to reflect not only the design features of the employed components, but also the working environment and the adopted maintenance policy. Anyway, in major hazard plants, available reliability data are few and not well documented. As a consequence, the common way of proceeding is to make reference to similar systems/plants or to... 

Pollution-prevention research is an overarching activity for which we want a combined in-house and extramural program that is focused on finding ways to eliminate or minimize hazardous solvents, emissions, and waste. In other words, we want to clean up processes to reduce impacts on the environment to examine renewable feedstocks as a process improvement and to minimize water, energy, and materials use in industrial processes. The work that EPA and NSF have funded on pollution prevention has been dominated by the chemical engineering... 

All chemical processing, whether on a large or a small scale, whether for high value chemicals or commodities, or for bulk drugs, textile polymers, petrochemicals or household products, carries a risk to those that work in the industry, to people around the manufacturing sites and beyond, and to the environment locally, beyond the locality, and at large. Indeed, the risk comes about from multiple directions ... 

The Safety Forum is the central arena for cooperation among the parties in the industry and the authorities concerning health, safety and environment in the petroleum activities on the Norwegian shelf and on land. The mandate of the forum is to initiate, discuss and follow up relevant safety issues, emergency preparedness and working environment issues in the petroleum industry, in a tripartite perspective. This involves consultation and follow-up closely of a number of key projects and processes, such as The risk level project , chemical health risk, and groups at risk... 

It is important to discuss the work environment that a process technician will be asked to perform in. Each chemical plant or refinery is a city within a city that has its own political structure and living environment. This includes the equipment, systems, processes, and people that are unique to the industry. 

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