Bhopal Gas Tragedy – World’s Worst Industrial Disaster: No Redressal and No Closure
– Dunu Roy, Director, Hazards Centre, Delhi; N.D. Jayaprakash, Joint Secretary, Delhi Science Forum
Bhopal Gas Tragedy is one of the world’s worst industrial disasters that has killed thousands of people and left other thousands with damaging health conditions. The pity is that even after 36 years, people haven’t got sufficient compensation nor proper medical relief & rehabilitation. This article updates readers on the current situation & the apathy of the authorities and the never-ending litigation.
Fault Tree Analysis – Safety Promoter & Defects Eliminator Primer
– S Raghava Chari, Industry Consultant
Fault Tree Analysis is necessary for organizations to have error-free operations as it provides more depth and specific metrics to maintain user well-being. Our author describes fault tree analysis with its advantages and applications in this article.
Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA)
– Ronjoy Rajkhowa, GVS Cibatech
A layer of protection analysis study is a quantitative method that contributes to make safety systems in a plant more reliable and robust. It shows the layers of protection needed to safeguard or mitigate a chemical process event. This article describes in detail how to conduct a LOPA study.
Transportation of Petroleum Products – A Comparison of Consequences on Accidental Release
– Dr. U K Chakrabarty, Industrial Safety Expert & Trainer
Transporting highly inflammable products like petrol, aviation turbine fuel (ATF), diesel oil, kerosene, and fuel oil can pose a hazardous risk to people all along the roads when these are transported. A comparative study of the consequences from accidental release of these
products is presented in this article.
Standalone Smart Control Valve
– V. Murugappan, Dow Chemical International Pvt. Ltd.
While these days chemical plants are highly automated, many of the earlier plants continue to use pneumatic controls. Such plants can be revamped. This article elaborates with a case study, on how control valves operated pneumatically in a 40-year-old plant is retrofitted into a smart standalone control valve circumventing DCS intervention.
Predictive Maintenance Takes on Operational Risk
– Dr. Paige Marie Morse, Aspen Technology, Inc
Hydrocarbon and all other chemical companies by the very nature of its operations are risk prone. Now advanced digital technologies have come as a boon to these companies, as using Industry 4.0 techniques enable early detection of potential equipment failure. This article articulates the advantages of the new generation digital technologies used in predictive maintenance.
Role of ‘Competency’ in Functional Safety – A Case Study
– Shivendra Kapoor, Instrumentation Engineer
While the increasing application of safety instrumented systems (SIS) in industry is welcome, it is usually observed that these systems are not comprehensively understood and applied from the Analysis, Realisation, Operation to its management. This ‘half journey’ approach is dangerous, says the author and explains this through a case study. One of the major reasons is because personnel do not try to gain full competency in this area.
Chemingineering – Suprahuman Operator
– K Sahasranaman, Independent Consultant
Chemical companies are engaging in remote monitoring of situations in a plant. Robots are being increasingly used in plants for functions like inspection, cleaning, leak detection, surveillance, etc. Not only are they efficient and more precise, but they have also proved to be better at jobs than humans. Our columnist discusses the various areas where robots have taken control of the plants.