System approach

The systems approach also pays special attention to the capabilities and limitations of the working population. It recognizes large individual differences among people in their physical and physiological capabilities. The job and the worker, therefore, should be appropriately matched whenever possible. 

The safety and risk of a hydrocarbon facility cannot be assessed solely on the basis of fire fighting systems or past loss histories. The overall risk can only be assessed by defining loss scenarios and an understanding of the risk philosophy adopted by senior management. 

Due to the destructive nature of hydrocarbon forces when handled incorrectly, fire and explosion protection principles should be the prime feature in the risk philosophy of any hydrocarbon facility. Vapor cloud explosions in particular are consider the highest risk at a hydrocarbon facility. Disregarding the importance of protection features or systems will eventually prove to be costly both in economic and human terms should a catastrophic incident occur without adequate safeguards. 

The systems approach seeks to identify situations or factors likely to contribute to human error. James Reason s analysis of industrial accidents revealed that catastrophic safety failures almost never result from isolated errors conunitted by individuals. Most incidents result from smaller and multiple errors in components and environments with underlying system flaws. Reason s Swiss Cheese Model describes this phenomenon. Errors made by individuals can result in disastrous consequences due to flawed systans that are represented by the holes in the cheese. Reason believed human error would happen in complex systems. Striving for perfection or punishing individuals who make errors does not appreciably improve safety. A systems approach stresses efforts to catch or anticipate human errors before they occur. Reason used the terms active errors and latent errors to distinguish individual errors from system errors. Active errors almost always involve frontline personnel. They occur at the point of contact between a human and some element of a larger system. Latent errors occur due to failures of the organization or designs that allow inevitable active errors to cause harm. The terms sharp end and blunt end correspond to active error and latent error. The systems approach provides a framework for analysis of errors and efforts to improve safety. 

Each system is unbounded by definition. Therefore, what constitutes its environment and this environment s boundaries are always subjectively determined by a systems analyst or by a designer, as in our case. These subjective decisions are extremely important and have a critical impact on the nature and novelty of the final results. In the case of inventive designing, the environment should be considered very carefully and its boundaries assumed generously to avoid at all costs any omission of important information, which might have impact on the design. At least six interrelated elements of the environment should be considered, including 

Process of the long-term evolution of the engineering system to be designed 

Determination of the physical environment in which our engineering system will operate is the first step in the process of learning about our system s environment. If we design a new type of a bicycle, we need to know if our bicycle is intended for use in a flat urban environment or in the mountains. Obviously, we need to know much more than that. For example, we also need to know if our bicycle will be used in the hot and dry desert climate of Niger or in the tropical forest climate, hot and humid, in Amazonia in Brazil. 

Within Reason s model, latent conditions and unsafe acts combine to produce organizational accidents and incidents. Latent conditions are inadequate conditions or failures residing throughout a system and include poor designs, inadequate supervision, manufacturing defects, maintenance failures, inadequate training, clumsy automation, inappropriate or ill-defined procedures, inadequate equipment, and procedural shortcuts, to name only a few. Unsafe acts, on the other hand, represent those errors that are made by human operators at the sharp end of system operation that have an immediate impact upon system safety. 

Computers can do all the left hemisphere processing better and faster than the human brain. So what s left for the human brain is global thinking, creative thinking, intuitive problem solving, seeing the whole picture. 

Life science research has tended toward the reductionist focus on smaller and more fundamental issues. Biomedical engineering, bioprocess engineering, and others have often followed this trend and so we find the subspecialties of tissue engineering and metabolic engineering, among others, describing engineers who have focused on the cellular or subcellular level. 

Principle 1 (Exponential growth) If each biological unit begets a similar unit in a certain time, and this process continues unabated by age, resource limits, predation, disease, or death, then the population will continue to grow indefinitely in an exponential fashion (see Section 4.3.3). Such populations are said to be unstable. 

Principle 3 (Competition) The struggle to obtain limited resources, to avoid enemies, or to find suitable mates can lead to competition, which may be either programmed or inadvertent. Competition limits the population, and can lead to an extinction threshold, wherein population numbers can become so low that the population ceases to exist. 

Principle 4 (Circular causality) Populations are affected by their environments, but they also directly affect the environment. Becanse of this two-way action, cycles are formed involving environment and populations. Some environmental factors are constant and nonreactive and some are reactive. Some effects are positive, others negative. For instance, the number of predators usually increases in response to increased numbers of prey (positive response), but, as the number of predators increases, the number of prey decreases (negative response). There is a carrying capacity of the environment. 

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Wlien H has reached its minimum value this is the well known Maxwell-Boltzmaim distribution for a gas in themial equilibrium with a unifomi motion u. So, argues Boltzmaim, solutions of his equation for an isolated system approach an equilibrium state, just as real gases seem to do. Up to a negative factor (-/fg, in fact), differences in H are the same as differences in the themiodynamic entropy between initial and final equilibrium states. Boltzmaim thought that his //-tiieorem gave a foundation of the increase in entropy as a result of the collision integral, whose derivation was based on the Stosszahlansatz. 

Outside this range, the system approaches the steady state obtained by setting dc/dt = dh/dt = 0 ... 

A second type of relaxation mechanism, the spin-spm relaxation, will cause a decay of the phase coherence of the spin motion introduced by the coherent excitation of tire spins by the MW radiation. The mechanism involves slight perturbations of the Lannor frequency by stochastically fluctuating magnetic dipoles, for example those arising from nearby magnetic nuclei. Due to the randomization of spin directions and the concomitant loss of phase coherence, the spin system approaches a state of maximum entropy. The spin-spin relaxation disturbing the phase coherence is characterized by T. ... 

The most connnon commercially prepared amplifier systems are pumped by frequency-doubled Nd-YAG or Nd-YLF lasers at a 1-5 kHz repetition rate a continuously pumped amplifier that operates typically in the 250 kHz regime has been described and implemented connnercially [40]. The average power of all of the connnonly used types of Ti-sapphire amplifier systems approaches 1 W, so the energy per pulse required for an experiment effectively detennines the repetition rate. 

The correction term in Eq. (9) shows that the basic assumption of additivity of the fragmental constants obviously does not hold true here. Correction has to be appHed, e.g., for structural features such as resonance interactions, condensation in aromatics or even hydrogen atoms bound to electronegative groups. Astonishingly, the correction applied for each feature is always a multiple of the constant Cu, which is therefore often called the magic constant . For example, the correction for a resonance interaction is +2 Cj, or per triple bond it is -1 A detailed treatment of the Ef system approach is given by Mannhold and Rekker [5]. 

In the simplest case, the feed solution consists of a solvent A containing a consolute component C, which is brought into contact with a second solvent B. Eor efficient contact there must be a large interfacial area across which component C can transfer until equiHbrium is reached or closely approached. On the laboratory scale this can be achieved in a few minutes simply by hand agitation of the two Hquid phases in a stoppered flask or separatory fuimel. Under continuous flow conditions it is usually necessary to use mechanical agitation to promote coalescence of the phases. After sufficient time and agitation, the system approaches equiHbrium which can be expressed in terms of the extraction factor S for component C ... 

The deleterious effect of some fat substitutes has been demonstrated in cake frosting (27) the result is an unacceptable frosting, filled with air bubbles. In another example, some low fat cheeses are quite acceptable when cold, but when heated result in a product texture that changes to a sticky, gummy mass. Attempts to replace fat must be viewed as a total systems approach (28,29). It is likely that no one material will replace fats in food rather, replacement will consist of mixtures with each ingredient addressing one or more of the roles played by fats in food. 

Two classes of fat replacers exist mimetics, which are compounds that help replace the mouthfeel of fats but caimot substitute for fat on a weight for weight basis and substitutes, compounds having physical and thermal properties similar to those of fat, that can theoretically replace fat in all appHcations (46). Because fats play a complex role in so many food appHcations, one fat replacer is often not a satisfactory substitute. Thus a systems approach to fat replacement, which reHes on a combination of emulsifiers, gums, and thickeners, is often used. 

Elame-spread and smoke-density values, and the less often reported fuel-contributed semiquantitive results of the ASTM E84 test and the limited oxygen index (LOI) laboratory test, are more often used to compare fire performance of ceUular plastics. AH building codes requite that ceUular plastics be protected by inner or outer sheathings or be housed in systems aH with a specified minimum total fire resistance. Absolute incombustibHity cannot be attained in practice and often is not requited. The system approach to protecting the more combustible materials affords adequate safety in the buildings by aHowing the occupant sufficient time to evacuate before combustion of the protected ceUular plastic. 

Standard reference materials provide a necessary but insufficient means for achieving accuracy and measurement compatibiUty on a national or international scale. Good test methods, good laboratory practices, well-qualified personnel, and proper intralaboratory and intedaboratory quaUty assurance procedures ate equally important. A systems approach to measurement compatibiUty is ikustrated in Figure 2. The function of each level is to transfer accuracy to the level below and to help provide traceabiUty to the level above. Thus traversing the hierarchy from bottom to top increases accuracy at the expense of measurement efficiency. 

The coordinates of thermodynamics do not include time, ie, thermodynamics does not predict rates at which processes take place. It is concerned with equihbrium states and with the effects of temperature, pressure, and composition changes on such states. For example, the equiUbrium yield of a chemical reaction can be calculated for given T and P, but not the time required to approach the equihbrium state. It is however tme that the rate at which a system approaches equihbrium depends directly on its displacement from equihbrium. One can therefore imagine a limiting kind of process that occurs at an infinitesimal rate by virtue of never being displaced more than differentially from its equihbrium state. Such a process may be reversed in direction at any time by an infinitesimal change in external conditions, and is therefore said to be reversible. A system undergoing a reversible process traverses equihbrium states characterized by the thermodynamic coordinates. 

SAMs are ordered molecular assembHes formed by the adsorption (qv) of an active surfactant on a soHd surface (Fig. 6). This simple process makes SAMs inherently manufacturable and thus technologically attractive for building supedattices and for surface engineering. The order in these two-dimensional systems is produced by a spontaneous chemical synthesis at the interface, as the system approaches equiHbrium. Although the area is not limited to long-chain molecules (112), SAMs of functionalized long-chain hydrocarbons are most frequently used as building blocks of supermolecular stmctures. 

The modem approach to wastewater treatment, protection of the oxygen resources of the receiving waters, requires that all aspects of the problem be addressed, ie, the systems approach. The Ohio River Sanitation Commission (ORSANCO) is an excellent example of basin-wide management dealing with situations that involve several poUtical entities. This approach has been adopted in several other regions. 

L. A. Gordon and G. E. Piuches, Improving Capital Budgeting A Dedsion Support System Approach, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass., 1984. 

Foxboro developed a self-tuning PID controller that is based on a so-called expert system approach for adjustment of the controller parameters. The on-line tuning of K, Xi, and Xo is based on the closed-loop transient response to a step change in set point. By evaluating the salient characteristics of the response (e.g., the decay ratio, overshoot, and closed-loop period), the controller parameters can be updated without actually finding a new process model. The details of the algorithm, however, are proprietary... 

Belt Presses Belt presses were fiiUy described in the section on filtration. The description here is intended to cover only the parts and designs that apply expression pressure by a mechanism in adchtion to the normal compression obtained from tensioning the belts and pulling them over rollers of smaller and smaller diameters. The tension on the belt produces a squeezing pressure on the filter cake proportional to the diameter of the rollers. Normally, that static pressure is calculated as P = 2T/D, where P is the pressure (psi), T is the tension on the belts (Ib/hnear in), and D is the roller diameter. This calculation results in values about one-half as great as the measured values because it ignores pressure created by drive torque and some other forces [Laros, Advances in Filtration and Separation Technology, 7 (System Approach to Separation and Filtration Process Equipment), pp. 505-510 (1993)]. 

Systems Approach Physical distribution is a term applied to a systems concept that comprises the entire spectrum of materials movement. The system begins with the storage and handling of raw materials and follows right on through the packaging and disposition of the finished product. The aim is the attainment of the lowest over-... 

Two main benefits accrue from a systems approach to materials handling and packaging. First, a trade-off of investment and operating costs is made possible nigher costs in some parts of a system become permissible in return for much lower costs in other parts. The net result is usually the lowest overall cost. If this is not the case, the reasons for incurring the higher costs can be identified and justified. The second benefit is that customers are not offended by ill-conceived packages, delivery vehicles, or product characteristics. 

HCS Hauled-container systems TSA Total systems approach... 

Ereduc tion of a product or service must be evaluated over its entire istoiy or life cycle. This life-cycle analysis or total systems approach (Ref. 3) is crucial to identifying opportunities for improvement. As described earher, this type of evaluation identifies energy use, material inputs, and wastes generated during a products hfe from extraction and processing of raw materials to manufacture and transport of a product to the marketplace and finally to use and dispose of the produc t (Ref. 5). 

Reduced negative environmental impacts. Through an evaluation of pollution-prevention alternatives, which consider a total systems approach, consideration is given to the negative impact of environmental damage to natural resources and species that occur during raw-material procurement and waste disposal. The performance of pollution-prevention endeavors will therefore result in enhanced environmental protection. 

Capital, operating, and environmental controls, and some life-cycle analysis (Total Systems Approach)... 

Ramanathan, P, S. Kannan, and J.F. Davis, Use Knowledge-Based-System Programming Toolkits to Improve Plant Trouhleshooting, Chemical Engineeiing Piogiess, June 1993, 75-84. (Expert system approach)... 

Wells, S. A. and Dick, R. I. (1993) "Permeability, Solid and Liquid Velocity, and Effective Stress Variations in Compressible Cake Filtration," Proceedings, American Filtration Society Conference on System Approach to Separation and Filtration Process Equipment, Chicago, Illinois, May 3-6, pp. 9-12... 

Eigure 8-25 shows the RTD of different numbers of tanks in series. As the number increases, the behavior of the system approaches that of a plug flow reactor. 

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