Managing Chemical Reactivity Hazards

Reactive Chemistry Reviews The process chemistry is reviewed for evidence of exotherms, shock sensitivity, and other instability, with emphasis on possible exothermic reactions. The purpose of this review is to prevent unexpected and uncontrolled chemical reactions. Reviewers should be knowledgeable people in the field of reactive chemicals and include people from loss prevention, manufacturing, and research. The CCPS Essential Practices for Managing Chemical Reactivity Hazards provides a useful protocol for identifying chemical reactivity hazards (Johnson et ah, 2003). A series of questions about the chemical handling operations and the materials are used to determine if there are possible reactivity hazards. Figure 23-18 summarizes the CCPS protocol for identifying reaction hazards. 

The purpose of this publication is to contribute to a continued reduction in the number and severity of incidents involving uncontrolled chemical reactions in the workplace. The obj ective of this publication is to convey the essentials of managing chemical reactivity hazards—those elements that are necessary, but not always sufficient, to avoid or mitigate chemical reactivity incidents. Implementing these elements should result in a management system that will, on an ongoing basis ... 

Commit to managing chemical reactivity hazards throughout the entire facility lifetime. 

This Concept Book seeks to fulfill a need for a document that gives details of practices that are essential to safely managing chemical reactivity hazards. Although it is presented primarily in the context of the U.S. and European industrial and regulatory arenas, the practices outlined in the... 

Each of the chapters in this Concept Book is aimed at a specific purpose. It is not necessary to go sequentially through all the material in this publication. Each chapter will be more or less applicable depending on the point at which a particular facility or company is starting in its efforts to identify, reduce, and manage chemical reactivity hazards. Figure 1.3 shows the interrelation between the chapters of this publication. 

Chapter 4 presents the practices that are considered essential to managing chemical reactivity hazards throughout the life of a facility. 

Chapter 6 discusses what direction future work may take on managing chemical reactivity hazards. 

Managing chemical reactivity hazards is not a one-time project, review, or audit. It is also not a written program document to put on the shelf and ignore. Managing chemical reactivity hazards is an ongoing effort to protect employees, contractors, customers, the public, environment, and property against the potential consequences of chemical reactivity incidents. 

To adequately manage chemical reactivity hazards, you must ... 

Listed in Table 2.1 are the essential elements of managing chemical reactivity hazards, as described in Sections 4.1 through 4.10 of this publication. They are mapped to comparable elements in three other, broader process safety and risk management systems ... 

Develop System to Manage Chemical Reactivity Hazards Management Systems Management System Safety Management System... 

It is not necessary or desirable to create a separate system for managing chemical reactivity hazards if an appropriate management system is already in place. All management system essentials (see Table 4.1 in Chapter 4) apply to the management of other process hazards as well, such as the handling of toxic or flammable materials. Most apply to other essential practices as well, such as environmental management, occupational safety, and industrial hygiene. 

As mentioned earlier, most facilities need not start from scratch when seeking to effectively manage chemical reactivity hazards. Elements of a hazards management system, such as an emergency response plan or a... 

Determine what you already have in place to manage chemical reactivity hazards. 

Table 2.3 gives one way for an existing facility to get started toward successfully managing chemical reactivity hazards. This assumes you already have an idea as to what chemical reactivity hazards must be addressed by the management system, such as by answering the questions in the Preliminary Screening Method of Chapter 3. 

One borderline circumstance, which should be considered as intentional chemistry for purposes of managing chemical reactivity hazards, is hydration. For example, anhydrous copper sulfate is a white solid with the formula CuS04. When it is crystallized from water, a blue crystalline solid with the formula CuS04-5H20 results, and the water molecules are an integral part of the crystal (Parker 1997). 

If your answer to Question 4 is clearly YES, or if you are unsure of the answer to this question, then start at Section 3.3 of this chapter. (The answer to Question 4 will be YES for most manufacturing facilities and many industrial storage and warehousing facilities.) If your answer is a definite NO, then you are not likely to have any chemical reactivity hazards at your facility, and a system to manage chemical reactivity hazards is not warranted. The information in Section 3.3 can be reviewed as a further check to verify this conclusion. 

As the Figure 4.1 flowchart implies, managing chemical reactivity hazards starts with a management system. To prevent incidents, a facility must not only be well designed, but also properly operated and maintained. A commitment to safety from all levels of management is essential, to ensure that all safety aspects receive adequate priority. In practice, conflicts of interest may arise between safety and other goals such as production demands and... 

Table 4.1 lists essential ingredients of a management system for successfully managing chemical reactivity hazards. An honest comparison of a company s current practice with the items in this list can be used to point out the gaps that need to be filled. If you are just getting started with chemical reactivity hazard management, this shows what is needed to develop a successful management system. 

An appropriate system to manage chemical reactivity hazards has been developed and formally documented. 

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