Car Seal programs have gained some attention in the refrigeration industry over the years, but there is still a significant debate over whether such a program is needed in the industry. A past incident at a client’s facility and the root cause of that incident shine a bright light on the need for a Car Seal program in the industry. This incident occurred during start-up AFTER a shutdown for maintenance on a vessel. Granted, one of the causes of this incident was a poorly written start-up procedure, which should have called out these two (2) safety critical valves, even without a Car Seal program in place. Look at this picture and see if you can identify the two (2) valves involved in this NH3 release via the RVs on a compressor…
The incident went down like this: