Operability, Reliability, and Maintenance of Major Equipment Inherent Safety

P. Balasubramanian

Recap
Atmospheric emissions

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Outcome
To acquaint with the inherent safety issues involved in the operation of chemical plant

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Content
Major hazards in process plant Inherent safety Conclusions References

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Operability, Reliability, and Maintenance of Major Equipment

Equipment that is started, stopped and/or operated incorrectly, or beyond its operating limits, will simply experience a higher failure rate. The reliability team works closely with the maintenance team to provide inspection and operating health feedback on a regular basis, and supplies design engineers, and suppliers with the information they need to improve equipment operability.
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Operability, Reliability, and Maintenance of Major Equipment

The reliability team works closely with design engineers, procurement specialists and strategic suppliers to improve design for reliability and maintainability To avoid purchasing the same problems over and over again. The importance of the maintenance function is to keep and improve system availability and safety, as well as product quality.
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Major Hazards
In the early 1970s the process industries became aware that, with larger plants involving higher inventories of hazardous material, the practice of learning by mistakes was no longer acceptable. Methods were developed for identifying hazards and for quantifying the consequences of failures.
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Major Hazards
The regulations require industrial companies to report on the operation of dangerous installations, and on the storage of dangerous materials. Identified the hazards.
Taken steps to ensure the proper design, testing and operation of the plant. Taken steps to prevent or minimize the consequences that would follow a major incident. Provided training and safety equipment for their employees.
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Major Hazards
Prepared, and kept up to date, an emergency plan covering procedures to deal with a major incident. Informed the public living outside the site, who may be affected by a major accident, of the nature of the hazard, and what to do in the event of an accident. Liaised with the local authorities in the preparation of an off-site emergency plan.

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Special Process Hazards

The special process hazards are factors that are known from experience to contribute to the probability of an incident involving loss. Twelve factors are listed: Toxic materials:
the presence of toxic substances after an incident will make the task of the emergency personnel more difficult.

Sub-atmospheric pressure:
allows for the hazard of air leakage into equipment. It is only applied for pressure less than 500 mmHg.
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Special Process Hazards

Operation in or near flammable range:
covers for the possibility of air mixing with material in equipment or storage tanks, under conditions where the mixture will be within the explosive range.

Dust explosion:
covers for the possibility of a dust explosion. The degree of risk is largely determined by the particle size.

Relief pressure:
equipment design and operation becomes more critical as the operating pressure is increased.

Low temperature:
this factor allows for the possibility of brittle fracture occurring in carbon steel, or other metals, at low temperatures.
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Special Process Hazards

Quantity of flammable material: depends on the physical state and hazardous nature of the process material, and the quantity of material. Corrosion and erosion: despite good design and materials selection, some corrosion problems may arise, both internally and externally. Leakagejoints and packing: this factor accounts for the possibility of leakage from gaskets, pump and other shaft seals, and packed glands.
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Special Process Hazards

Use of fired heaters:
the presence of boilers or furnaces, heated by the combustion of fuels, increases the probability of ignition should a leak of flammable material occur from a process unit.

Hot oil heat exchange system:

most special heat exchange fluids are flammable and are often used above their flash points; so their use in a unit increases the risk of fire or explosion.

Rotating equipment:
this factor accounts for the hazard arising from the use of large pieces of rotating equipment: compressors, centrifuges, and some mixers.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

The three major hazards in process plant are
Fire explosion and toxic release.

Fire:
Fire is still a major hazard and can under the worst conditions approach explosion in its disaster potential. Fire requires a combustible material (gas or vapor, liquid, solid, solid in the form of a dust dispersed in a gas), an oxidant (usually oxygen in air) and usually, but not always, a source of ignition.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

Consider now the important factors in assessing fire as a hazard: Auto ignition temperature
The auto ignition temperature of a gas or vapor is the temperature at which it will ignite in air, without any external source of ignition.

Flammability limits
A flammable gas or vapor will burn in air only over a limited range of composition. Below a certain concentration of the flammable gas, the lower flammability limit, the mixture is too lean to burn. Above a certain concentration, the upper flammability limit, it is too rich to burn.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

Concentrations between these limits constitute the flammable range. Combustion of a flammable gasair mixture occurs if the composition of the mixture lies in the flammable range and if there is a source of ignition. Alternatively, the combustion of the mixture occurs without a source of ignition if the mixture is heated up to its auto ignition temperature.

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Major Hazards in Process Plant

The most flammable mixture is usually the stoichiometric mixture for combustion. It is often found that the concentrations of the lower and upper flammability limits are approximately onehalf and twice that of the stoichiometric mixture, respectively. Flammability limits are also affected by temperature. An increase in temperature usually widens the flammable range. Flammability limits are affected by pressure. The effect of pressure changes is specific to each mixture. An increase in pressure can widen the flammable range
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

Minimum oxygen concentration
The lower flammability limit measures the lowest concentration that will allow combustion of a vaporair mixture.

Inert gas (usually nitrogen) is added to the mixture to prevent combustion. The minimum oxygen concentration is a limit below which the reaction cannot generate enough energy for the mixture (including inerts) to allow self propagation of a flame. The minimum oxygen is stated as a percent of oxygen in air plus combustible material.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

Flash point
The flash point of a liquid is the lowest temperature at which it gives off enough vapor to form an ignitable mixture with air.

Limiting oxygen concentration of a dust

The limiting oxygen concentration of a dust is the minimum concentration of oxygen capable of supporting combustion of dust that is dispersed in the form of a cloud.

Minimum ignition temperature of a dust

The minimum ignition temperature of a dust is the lowest temperature at which dust that is dispersed in the form of a cloud can ignite. Decreasing particle size of dust and decreasing moisture content both lower the minimum ignition temperature.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

Explosion
The second of the major hazards is explosion, which has a disaster potential usually considered to be greater than fire but lower than toxic release. Explosion is a sudden and violent release of energy. The energy released in an explosion on a process plant is either of the following.

Chemical energy
Chemical energy derives from a chemical reaction. The source of the chemical energy is exothermic chemical reactions or combustion of flammable material (dust, vapor or gas).

Physical energy
Physical energy may be pressure energy in gases, thermal energy, strain energy in metals or electrical energy. An example of an explosion caused by release of physical energy would be fracture of a vessel containing high-pressure gas.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

There are two basic kinds of explosions involving the release of chemical energy: Deflagration
In a deflagration, the flame front travels through the flammable mixture relatively slowly.

Detonation
The detonation front travels with a velocity greater than the speed of sound in the unreacted medium. A detonation generates greater pressures and is more destructive than a deflagration. The peak pressure caused by the deflagration of a hydrocarbonair mixture or a dust mixture at atmospheric pressure is of the order of 8 to 10 bar. However, a detonation may give a peak pressure of the order of 20 bar.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

There are two basic kinds of explosions: Confined explosions
Confined explosions are those that occur within vessels, pipework or buildings.

Unconfined explosions
Explosions that occur in the open air are unconfined explosions.

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Major Hazards in Process Plant

Toxic Release The high disaster potential from toxic release arises in situations in which large numbers of people are briefly exposed to high concentrations of toxic material. However, the long-term health risks associated with prolonged exposure at low concentrations over a working life also present serious hazards. When synthesizing a flowsheet, it is obviously best to try and avoid, the use of toxic materials altogether.
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Major Hazards in Process Plant

However, this is often just not possible. In this case, the designer should take particular care to avoid processing and storing toxic liquids under pressure at temperatures above their atmospheric boiling points. As with flammable materials, if a leak occurs, whether large or small, the mass flowrate through a hole of a given size is far greater for a liquid than for a gas.
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Intensification of Hazardous Materials

The best way of dealing with a hazard in a flowsheet is to remove it completely. One of the principal approaches to making a process inherently safe is to limit the inventory of hazardous material. The inventories to be avoided most of all are flashing, flammable liquids or flashing, toxic liquids. When synthesizing a process, the occurrence of flammable gas mixtures should be avoided, rather than relying on the elimination of sources of ignition.
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Inherent Safety
Reactors
batch to continuous batch to semibatch mixed-flow reactors to plug-flow reduce the inventory in the reactor by increasing temperature or pressure, by changing catalyst or by better mixing lower the temperature of a liquid-phase reactor below the normal boiling point.

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Inherent Safety
Distillation
choose the distillation sequence to minimize the inventory of hazardous material use partition or dividing-wall columns to reduce the inventory relative to two simple columns and reduce the number of items of equipment and hence lower the potential for leaks

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Inherent Safety
Heat Transfer Operations
use water or other nonflammable heat transfer media use a lower temperature utility or heat transfer medium use a liquid heat transfer medium below its atmospheric boiling point if flammable or toxic if refrigeration is required, consider higher pressure if this allows a less hazardous refrigerant to be used
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Inherent Safety
Storage
locate producing and consuming plants near to each other so that hazardous intermediates do not have to be stored and transported reduce storage by increasing design flexibility store in a safer form (less extreme pressure, temperature or in a different chemical form).

Relief Systems
consider strengthening vessels rather than relief systems

Overall Inventory
consider changes to reactor conversion and recycle inert concentration to reduce the overall inventory.
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Quantitative measures of inherent safety

A simple quantitative measure of inherent safety for fire and explosion hazards is the energy released by combustion of material that enters the vapor phase upon release from containment. The combustion energy releases associated with two process alternatives can be compared and some judgment made of the relative inherent safety of the two options as far as fire and explosion hazards are concerned.
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Quantitative measures of inherent safety The difficulty is one of defining the mode of release. In the worst case, catastrophic failure involving release of all the materials could be assumed and the energy release calculated from the part that would vaporize. On the other hand, the release could be assumed to occur from a standard-sized hole in the equipment
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Quantitative measures of inherent safety

This would be a less hazardous scenario than catastrophic failure but more likely to occur. If the hazard is toxicity, process alternatives can be compared by assessing the mass of toxic material that would enter the vapor phase on release from containment, weighting the components according to their lethal concentration.
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Example
A process involves the use of benzene as a liquid under pressure. The temperature can be varied over a range. Compare the fire and explosion hazard of operating with a liquid process inventory of 1000 kmol at 100C and 150C, on the basis of the theoretical combustion energy resulting from catastrophic failure of the equipment. The normal boiling point of benzene is 80C, latent heat of vaporization 31,000 kJ/kmol, specific heat capacity 150 kJ/kmol-K and heat of combustion 3.2 106 kJ/kmol.
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Conclusion
Major hazards in process plants are discussed. Inherent safety of major equipment is presented. An illustrative example is provided for quantitative measures of inherent safety

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References
R. Smith, Chemical Process: Design and Integration, Wiley, 2005.

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