A study of past accidents in the chemical process industry (CPI) has been carried out by Helsinki University of Technology, Plant Design, Department of Biotechnology and Chemical Technology. It is found that the majority (73%) of the accidents were caused by technical and engineering failures. Based on the causes of accident and types of equipment failures, five common features of an accident in the CPI were identified. The analysis reveals that the contribution of the design to accidents is significant and the advancement of knowledge/technology is not shared effectively by practitioners. Dependency on the add-on control strategy should be reduced and inherently safer or passive engineered must be considered as premier risk reduction strategy to lessen the safety load, for better design and to prevent accident effectively. Figure 1 shows the general (pie chart) and immediate (bar chart) causes of accidents in CPI based on Failure Knowledge Database. It clearly indicates that majority of the accidents are caused by technical failures (73%), followed by organizational (23%) and unknown (4%).
Analysis of Accidents in Chemical Process Industry and Lessons Learnt