Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. When down through the chimney, all covered with soot Came the “Spirit of Fire,” an ugly galoot. His eyes glowed like embers; his features were stern As he looked all around him for something…...
The Incident: In September 2000, a steel lecture bottle located within a hood in a UNR laboratory ruptured with explosive force. The explosion occurred at night, and no one was present in the laboratory at the time. However, there was significant damage to the lab hood. The gas cylinder contained methyl nitrite (CH3ONO), which had…...
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In the realm of process safety, a Functional Test of the Safety Instrumented System (SIS) is a periodic procedure performed to ensure that an SIS will operate as designed when a real-world demand occurs. While a system might look operational on a control panel, internal “hidden” failures could prevent it from actually shutting down a…...
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In determining threshold quantities for toxic chemicals, OSHA used the Gaussian dispersion model. OSHA made the following assumptions:… Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here...
I encountered something new this week; well, new to me, as I have never seen an RT Rejection rate of 26%. So I knew that was crazy high, as the normal rate is around 2-3%. So I had to go back to my ASME B31 Course and research an acceptable rate:… Membership Required You must...
On Tuesday, April 8, 1997, at approximately 8:59 a.m., a 5,700-gallon hydrochloric acid (HCl) storage tank ruptured during filling. The failure of the HCl tank caused a significant portion of its liquid contents (which totaled about 4,800 gallons of 31% HCl) to suddenly surge over the secondary containment. The force of the liquid also caused…...
The use of risk controls or barriers to protect the people from hazards is a core principle of safety. Barriers are employed to serve two purposes: to prevent the release of hazardous energy and to mitigate harm in the event hazardous energy is released Energy is defined broadly as used here and includes multiple forms,…...
Safety Management Systems (SMS) was developed to integrate safety as part of an organization’s management of safety performance. The benefits of process-based management systems are a well-established component of quality performance. As organizations and the technologies they employ became more complex and diverse, and the rate of change in the pace of societal expectations, technical…...
An organizational event-causal story developed by James Reason starts with the organizational factors: Strategic decisions, Generic organizational processes – forecasting, budgeting, allocating resources, planning, scheduling, communicating, managing, auditing, etc. These processes are colored and shaped by the corporate culture, unspoken attitudes, and unwritten rules concerning how the organization carries out its business. [Reason, 1997]… Membership...
This is one of the most commonly misunderstood RMP/PSM compliance issues for facilities that use rail cars as storage tanks and or use “tube trailers” as storage tanks. EPA has been clear since 1998 on how these rail cars that are hooked up to the process and those that are “stored on spurs” are to…...
