(57cv) Understanding Hazards and Risks in Labs and Pilot Plants

Abstract

When an accident occurs in Labs or Pilot Plants, involving loss of containment, chemical exposure, explosion or fire, people are often seriously and sometimes fatally injured. The subsequent investigation findings often identify the lack of understanding of hazards and risks and analysis of the risk as a root cause factor. Hazard Identification is a cradle to grave process covering process engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, structural engineering and electrical/instrumentation systems that shall apply to help to ensure that process safety incidents (loss of containment events) in the Labs and pilot plants are prevented.

Process information is used by competent individuals as part of process hazard identification help to identify significant hazards and then various tools are employed for consequence analysis and estimation of likelihood to analyze risks and to determine what safeguards are required to manage risks to an acceptable level. This includes the following steps:

• Identification of significant process hazards and determines what can go wrong
• Determines how bad it could be (the severity of the consequences)
• Estimates how often it might happen (the probability or likelihood)
• Ensure that appropriate recovery action is taken in the event that a safety control fails
• Review of risk assessment studies and their outcomes are recorded and kept up to-date

Process safety related information is collected during R&D activities and is concerned with three topics:

• Hazards of the chemicals used
• The technology of the process
• The equipment in the process

The following Process Hazard Identification and Analysis Methodologies can be used in labs and pilot plants.

• Checklist Analysis
• What If Analysis
• Task Risk Assessment (TRA) and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA)
• HAZOP (Hazard and Operability)

Key Words: Process Safety, Pilot Plant, Labs, Hazard, Risk