Our White Papers

Security threats can come from internal or external adversaries. Internal threats include disgruntled employees and/or contractors, or employees forced into cooperation by threat of extortion or violence. External sources include criminals, extremists or terrorists.

This paper outlines one organization’s efforts on enhancement of their process safety management systems. In this case study the original process safety systems were established to support and drive risk management and compliance in response to American Chemical Council’s Responsible Care initiatives preceding U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA’s) process safety management (PSM) and Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Plan (RMP).

To reduce time to market, the industry is putting out new products at a faster rate and outsourcing more activities than ever before. Time is of the essence. Therefore, technology transfer during product development, whether within and between companies, needs to work perfectly the first time, exceed expectations, and meet regulatory compliance.

Facility siting has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years and is an important aspect of process safety for plant personnel and their contractors. In December 2009, API issued the Third Edition of the Recommended Practice 752, “Management of Hazards Associated with Location of Process Plant Permanent Buildings,”

This paper considers changes in Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) methodology since its introduction 40 years ago. HAZOP is a team-based activity for identifying process hazards and operability concerns. The intent is to review process design and identify hazardous deviations through facilitated application of guidewords, then evaluate safeguards and (where necessary) recommend improvements.

As we start a new year, we can take pride in our accomplishments for 2002. Unfortunately, we cannot linger too long because there are new challenges awaiting us in 2003.

Despite investment of considerable resources to conduct PHAs, many companies are still experiencing a high rate of incidents and find that the causes of these incidents have not been identified and/or addressed in their PHAs.

This paper illustrates a case study that compiles and analyses management system audit findings and related data from a sample of 16 process facilities.

Chemical process hazards cannot be effectively managed if they first cannot be properly identified. This is especially true for reactive chemicals storage, processing, and management. Reaction rates can be significantly influenced by the presence of contaminants, inhibitors, incompatible chemicals, etc.

The biogas market is growiong rapidly, with a projected 4.5% CAGR from 2022 to 2027. With global and national initiatives to reduce carbon emissions such as the Paris Agreement and the UK Net Zeo 2050 goal, biofuels will play a crucial role in meeting those targets. Despite their benefits, biogas facilities face significant safety challenges.

Safety and risk analysis studies involving toxic chemicals often require the use of limiting toxicity criteria to develop safe exclusion zones, individual risk profiles, and/or societal risk profiles. For a short duration release, a fixed concentration criteria may overpredict the extent of hazard or risk.

This paper concerns the management of onshore transmission oil and gas pipelines and the choices that operators must make for investment decision-making, particularly concerning the environmental consequences of incidents where there is a loss of containment (LOC) event from the pipeline (i.e. a leak or rupture).

Chemical and energy sectors continue to experience similar recurrent incidents and accidents despite best practices and dedication to safety. Competence and lessons learned need to be shared and passed on to mitigate near-misses and events.

Most companies have completed at least three process safety management (PSM) compliance audits of their covered facilities since the promulgation of the OSHA PSM standard. These companies, however, are not seeing noticeable improvements in their PSM programs.