An Approach For Teaching Process Safety Risk Engineering and Management Control Concepts Using AIChE's Web-Based Concept Warehouse
An Approach For Teaching Process Safety Risk Engineering and Management Control Concepts Using AIChE's Web-Based Concept Warehouse
Bruce K. Vaughen
AIChE Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), New York, NY, 10005; [email protected] (for correspondence)
Published online 00 Month 2018 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/prs.12010
2 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
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(Continues)
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 3
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departments to add new courses to a packed curriculum, espe- meet the ABET requirement part (ii) described in Section 1, by
cially one focusing on process safety; (2) understanding the helping instructors incorporate “safety into other courses.” In
importance and availability of course-specific process safety particular, when the Concept Warehouse is used for real-time
problems, especially those which fit into the current core interactive reviews during lectures, instructors can access and
chemical engineering courses; and (3) the expectation and use vetted problems, obtain real-time feedback from their stu-
ability to sustain current technological relevance in the class- dents using clickers, smart phones, or laptops, assess instantly
room as the industrial process safety risk management how the students are doing (how much they understand or do
approaches evolve and thus, represent, the evolving and best not understand), and immediately adjust their lecture content
practices for effectively managing process safety risks of com- based on results of the real-time assessment. The Concept
plex chemical processes. The bridge-building continues to Warehouse can be used in addition to other tools, such as
address the gap between academia and industry [6,10]. This homework and laboratory assignments, to help reinforce the
article, in part, addresses item (ii) of the ABET accreditation student’s understanding of the concept.
criterion, providing a process safety-related problems globally The overarching goal of the Concept Warehouse is to
with a web-based, student interactive instructional database. enable chemical engineering instructors to better provide their
students with concept-based instruction [11]. Whereas some
3. THE PROCESS SAFETY PROBLEM FRAMEWORK AND VETTING students may focus more on rote memorization and learning
PROCEDURE
rather than on conceptual understanding, it is known that
This section provides a brief overview of the Concept Ware- concept-based instruction helps students use their knowledge
house, a proposed framework for organizing the problems in better when given new situations, especially after graduation
the process safety pallet, and describes the steps for how these [12]. The effectiveness of the student’s learning is reflected in
problems will be vetted before they become available to the data assessment during the lecture using the different types of
global community. The purpose of this section, Section 3, is to problems that are entered into the warehouse.
provide some background for those unfamiliar with the Concept For effective student learning and comprehension, several
Warehouse. Section 4 will introduce the terminology currently instructional strategies must be used to increase the likelihood
being used in industry at the time this paper was being prepared for retention. Thus, the Concept Warehouse provides several
to provide some background for those unfamiliar with the ever- types of activity and presentation (“delivery”) options for prob-
evolving process safety related terms. Both Section 3 (the “aca- lems, including physical experiments or simulations performed
demic” discussion) and Section 4 (the “industry” discussion) are by the student or demonstrated by the instructor, and thought
designed to help bridge the gap between those familiar with the experiments with discussions led by the instructor during a
Concept Warehouse and those familiar with how process haz- lecture. An example list of activity and delivery options for a
ards and risks are identified and assessed in industry. Section 5 cooling beverage problem option is illustrated in Figure 2 [11].
provides examples of some process safety-related problems The more hands-on activity, the more effective the teaching;
which can be selected and used by instructors. conversely, the less hands-on the instruction, such as a “thought
experiment,” the less effective the teaching may be. The amount
3.1 The Concept Warehouse of effort to create, use and explain a physical experiment will
One of the reasons for choosing the Concept Warehouse is take considerably more effort than the effort for generating a
to help chemical engineering departments in the United States thought experiment, as well. The Concept Warehouse (CW)
4 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
Table 2. Publications with articles on safety-related warehouse’s fork truck operator and select problems that apply
educational efforts. to their class, as is illustrated in Figure 3. While many chemical
engineering subjects have had time for problems to be
developed, entered, and vetted for global use, there were
1 AIChE Journal, American Institute of Chemical Engineers
less than 10 process safety-related problems entered at the
– AIChE, onlinelibrary.wiley.com
time this article was prepared. To address this shortcoming, vol-
2 Chemical Engineering and Technology, onlinelibrary.
unteers from the S&H Division formed a team to: (1) take advan-
wiley.com
tage of the process safety-related problems created by process
3 Chemical Engineering Education, ww2.che.ufl.edu/cee
safety professionals for use in chemical engineering courses, and
4 Chemical Engineering Progress, American Institute of
(2) enter and vet these problems into the Concept Warehouse
Chemical Engineers—AIChE, www.aiche.org/
database. Example problems are shown in Section 5.
resources/publications/cep
To help instructors find process safety-related problems
5 Chemical Health and Safety, American Chemical
pertinent to their class, the process safety-related problems
Society—ACS, Division of Health and Safety, www.
have been organized to match each Class following the typical
journals.elsevier.com
chemical engineering curriculum. Thus, for each Class, “Pro-
6 Cognition, Technology, and Work, www.springer.com/
cess Safety” can be chosen as a “Topic”—the pallet of prob-
computer/hci/journal/10111
lems accessible by the instructor. For example, a
7 Computers and Chemical Engineering, www.journals.
thermodynamics instructor can search for a process-safety
elsevier.com
related problem that they could use in their class, such as the
8 Computers and Industrial Engineering, www.journals.
energy-release calculations for an adiabatic expansion. One of
elsevier.com
the examples in Section 5 is such a case based on an actual
9 Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering, www.
incident when a CO2 fire extinguisher exploded. Within each
journals.elsevier.com
Class/Topic there are Subtopics from which the instructor can
10 Education for Chemical Engineers, Institution of
choose. These Subtopics are based on the eight Hazards Iden-
Chemical Engineers – IChemE, www.journals.elsevier.
tification and Risk Analysis (HIRA) steps used in industry to
com
help understand the risks that must be managed: (1) Identify
11 Journal of Integrated Security Science, journals.library.
Hazards; (2) Identify Scenarios; (3) Identify Consequence
tudelft.nl/index.php/jiss
Types; (4) Evaluate Scenario Impact; (5) Evaluate Scenario
12 Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries,
Likelihood; (6) Evaluate Risk; (7) Evaluate Protection Layers
www.journals.elsevier.com
(Barriers); and (8) Manage Risk. These Subtopics will be dis-
13 Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education,
cussed in more detail Section 4. The Class/Topic/Subtopic
American Society of Civil Engineers—ASCE, ascelibrary.
framework for the process safety problems in the Concept
org
Warehouse is shown in Table 3. As shown in Table 3, the Con-
14 Journal of Safety Research, www.journals.elsevier.com
cept Warehouse Subtopics selections can be expanded to
15 Occupational Health and Safety, ohsonline.com
include other subjects, such as process control, laboratory,
16 Occupational Medicine, Society of Occupational
case studies, and regulatory requirements.
Medicine—SOM, academic.oup.com/occmed
17 Procedia Computer Science, www.journals.elsevier.
com 3.3 The Problem Entry and Vetting Procedure
18 Procedia Engineering, www.journals.elsevier.com This effort to populate the Concept Warehouse is split into
19 Process Safety and Environmental Protection, www. two phases which will overlap during the transition from the
journals.elsevier.com initial existing problem entry and vetting effort (Phase 1) to the
20 Process Safety Progress, Center for Chemical Process ongoing problem creation, entry, and vetting effort (Phase 2).
Safety—CCPS, onlinelibrary.wiley.com The first phase, currently underway as this paper is being pre-
21 Professional Safety, formerly the American Society of pared, will be supported by S&H Division volunteers. These
Safety Engineers—ASSE, now the American Society of volunteers will enter previously created problems from a vari-
Safety Professionals—ASSP, assp.org ety of undergraduate-level problem sets and sources [13,14].
22 Reliability Engineering and System Safety Journal, www. The second phase, Phase 2, will be an ongoing authoring
journals.elsevier.com effort with new problems continuously being created, entered,
23 Safety Science, www.journals.elsevier.com vetted, and approved for global access. These ongoing prob-
lem creation efforts will include using manuals and software
provided to the CCPS and EPSC through a generous contribu-
tion by the Dow Chemical Company [15,16,17,18]. The basis
Team’s volunteer problem-entry work described in this paper for both of these HIRA-related gifts, the Chemical Engineering
for entering process safety-related problems is “low effort,” Fundamentals (CHEF) Calculation Aid and Risk Analysis
using existing problem sets that have been already developed Screening Tool (RAST), is described in Section 4.2.
by process safety professionals. As was noted in Section 3.2, there are many excellent
sources available today that contain process safety-rated
problems. These problems have been organized within the
3.2 The Framework for Organizing the Process Safety framework shown in Table 3, with the initial problem set allo-
Problems cated to each volunteer for them to enter into the Concept
At the time this article was prepared, the Concept Warehouse Warehouse database. In both phases, problem volunteer/
contained over 2,000 interactive problems from fundamental author will be (or will be) trained and given access to the Con-
chemical engineering course subjects such as material and cept Warehouse, with the following steps occurring before the
energy balances, kinetics and reactor design, transport phenom- problem is vetted, approved, and subsequently released to the
ena, thermodynamics, etc., with each “Class” designated as a global community:
“pallet.” Thus, the problem database “warehouse” contains many
pallets that an instructor can access and use during lectures. 1. Author enters problem
Using the warehouse as the location of and storage area for pal- 2. CW Vetting Team reviews problem
lets of inventoried problems, the instructor can be depicted as a 3. Author addresses and corrects any issues
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 5
Figure 2. The effectiveness and effort for different types of student/instructor activities [11]. [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
6 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
Table 3. The Concept Warehouse process safety problem framework.
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 7
Table 4. The Concept Warehouse process safety problem potential incidents where loss of control of these hazards can
vetting procedure. cause harm to people, property, and the environment.
After identifying the scenario, Question 4 is used to deter-
mine the likelihood: “How often might it happen?” There are
three broad categories used to estimate the initiating event for
a scenario: equipment failure, human error, and external
events. Each of the causes in these groups has a frequency
associated with it: either the cause can occur frequently, for
example, once every day, or not very often, for example, once
every 10 years. Equipment failures include mechanical system
failures due to equipment-related defects, wear, vibration, and
corrosion, and control system/component failures, such as
sensor, processor, or control element failures. When equip-
ment breaks, it fails to do its job, and the scenario begins. Human
errors can occur at any time in the equipment’s life cycle (refer to
Section 4.3): when engineers design the equipment and pro-
cesses; when operators operate the process equipment; and
when maintenance personnel maintain the equipment. External
events include extreme weather (such as hurricanes, typhoons,
or earthquakes), potential incidents from adjacent facilities that
could impact the facility (such as a toxic release that crosses the
fenceline), and sabotage or terrorism (depending on many factors
across the world). Each of the initiating events just described has
some measure of how often it could occur. This number is used
in the simplified risk equation and is often represented in number
of events per year, such as at one failure or one error per year.
Although there is standard industrial guidance for equipment fail-
ure, human error, and external events such as a hurricanes or
floods depend on the location of the facility (e.g., on a coastline
or near a river). Managing these risks, even with the significant
operations—the risks are being effectively managed to meet consequences from them when they occur, can be addressed
our objective to do no harm. A visual depiction of the ques- with engineering designs (such as pumps located above
tions and HIRA approach is provided in Figure 4; a summary expected flood levels) and administrative controls (such as emer-
of the HIRA questions and steps is provided in Table 6. gency planning and response). Again, please refer to the litera-
As was discussed in Section 3.2, to assist instructors teaching ture for detailed methods for estimating the likelihood [17,25,26].
process safety-related engineering and administrative controls The risk posed in Question 5 (What is the risk?) can be
and concepts, the problems in the Concept Warehouse have determined by calculating the risk and then using an iterative
been organized using the HIRA approach. The connection approach on the types of barriers required to effective reduce
between the HIRA questions and Concept Warehouse subtopics the overall risk. Again, this is beyond the scope of this article
is also shown in Table 6. For example, an instructor teaching a and the reader is referred to excellent resources in the literature
material and energy balances class could refer to the problems [17,23]. How risk can be effectively managed is discussed in
provided in the process safety subtopic for Question 1: “What more detail in the literature as well [19,22,28]. See Section 4.3
are the hazards?” Since all material and energy hazards must be for more background on the types of barriers used to effectively
identified first for each process, this is the first question posed manage process safety risks, which is described in Section 4.5.
in the HIRA. Chemical hazards and the potentially hazardous Once Questions 1 through 5 have been addressed, Ques-
interactions between them must be identified and understood tion 6 is asked: “What are the controls?” The engineering and
for each process unit. Chemical hazards focus on their toxicity, administrative controls, both preventive and mitigative, are
flammability, explosivity, instability, reactivity, and corrosivity explained in Sections 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5. These address the last
and their adverse effects on people or other materials. There step in the HIRA approach: effectively managing the protection
are energy hazards that must be understood, as well. Hazardous layers (Figure 4, Table 6).
energies include chemical energy (e.g., energy released during
a chemical reaction), thermal energy (e.g., heat radiated by a
fire), mechanical energy (e.g., heat generated by rotating equip- 4.3 The Types of Barriers Used to Help Manage
ment), and pressure energy (e.g., vacuums or confined gas or Process Safety Risks
liquid pressures). On completion of the HIRA, a process safety practitioner
The other HIRA questions and associated steps will be has established the types of barriers which are required to
briefly noted in this section, with those unfamiliar with details either prevent or mitigate the scenario analyzed in a HIRA.
for performing an effective HIRA encouraged to learn more Again, it is not the purpose of this article to provide the details
through resources in the literature [18,22,23,24,25,26]. As of how barriers, also known as protection layers, have been
shown in Figure 4 and summarized in Table 6, the HIRA evaluated for each scenario. Such details can be obtained in
approach includes identifying scenarios—event sequences— the literature [17,22,23]. This section briefly describes some of
that could occur if the hazardous materials or conditions are the barriers which can used to help manage process safety
not controlled (the incident), identifying the types of conse- risks and where such problems can be found in the Concept
quences which could occur, such as toxic releases, fires, Warehouse.
explosions, or runaway reactions, and how bad the conse- Barriers are either designated as preventive (designed and
quence could be—their potential impact. The impact is esti- in place to reduce the likelihood of an incident) or mitigative
mated using source and dispersion models [15,27]. The hazard (in place to reduce the impact of an event). Barriers are also
scenarios identified using Question 2 (What can go wrong?) called protection layers that are often characterized as an engi-
and Question 3 (How bad could it be?) are then used as neering control, an administrative control, or a combination of
8 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
Table 5. Definitions and descriptions of some process safety terms.
both engineering and administrative controls. Engineering con- diagram, as is shown in Figure 5. The preventive and mitiga-
trols include computerized, instrumented systems, pressure tive engineering controls are further defined in Table 7
relief valves, and flare systems. Administrative controls include [19,20,22,28,29]. Thus, if an instructor would like to teach some
procedures and process safety systems. These different types aspect of an engineering design, such as a pressure relief sys-
of barriers are depicted a diagram known as an “onion skin” tem, they would find such a problem in their design class
Figure 4. Questions in the Hazard Identification and Risk Analysis (HIRA) approach [Adapted from 18, 22]. [Color figure can be
viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 9
Table 6. Questions and steps in the Hazards Identification and Risk Analysis (HIRA) approach.
under the process safety subtopic 7) Evaluate Protection Layers 4.4 The Process and Equipment Life Cycle
(Barriers), as is shown in Concept Warehouse problem frame- Before discussing how process safety risks are effectively
work (Table 3). managed, there is one more essential concept that must be
clearly communicated to the student: the process and equip-
ment life cycle. The phases in the process and equipment life
cycle affect and are affected by the management systems—the
administrative controls—in an effective process safety
program. In particular, all of the process safety equipment
engineered to monitor, detect, respond, and control the pro-
cess hazards and their risks have eight distinct phases from
their birth to death, as is shown in Figure 6. These eight phases
described in Table 8.
In addition, the equipment designed and used to con-
trol the process safety risks fit into two general categories
in the Concept Warehouse problem set for maintaining
and sustaining the equipment’s integrity over their
life time:
Figure 5. An example protection layer or barrier model [20] 4.5 Effectively Managing Process Safety Risks
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com] As depicted in Figure 5, the engineering and administrative
controls have been designed to reduce the process safety risk
10 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
Table 7. Definitions for the protection layers (barriers).
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 11
2
Fabricate
1 4 5 6 8
Construct Commission Operate Maintain Decommission
Design
3
Install
7
Change
Figure 6. The process and equipment life cycle [Adapted from 19].
using both preventive and mitigative controls. The preventive con- other systems-based approaches [22,28,32,33,34]. An effective
trols are designed to help reduce the frequency of the hazardous process safety program consists of three fundamental founda-
loss event from occurring. The mitigative controls are designed to tions that help integrate each of the process safety elements used
reduce the consequence’s impact of the incident. When combined to identify, evaluate, understand, and manage process safety
in an overall process safety and risk management program, both hazards and risks. The three essential foundations for an effec-
these preventive and mitigative engineering and administrative tive process safety program, Safety Culture and Leadership, Pro-
controls help reduce the overall process safety risk [19]. cess Safety Systems, and Operational Discipline for consistency
The management system examples provided in Section 5 are with capitalization in Figure 7. The key concept for each of these
based on the eight process safety systems essential for an effec- foundations was provided with a description in Table 5. Within
tive process safety program [19]. Please refer to the literature for the Process Safety Systems foundation, there are eight systems
required to effectively manage process safety risks during the
entire life cycle. The intent and concept for each of these eight
Table 8. The different phases in the process and equipment
systems is shown in Table 9. Please refer to the literature for
life cycle.
more details on these concepts, including how they have been
successfully implemented in industry [19,35,36]. The final risk
management controls, both engineering and administrative, are
implemented and are used to achieve and maintain safe and reli-
able operations during the process and equipment life time.
12 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
Table 9. The concepts for each of the process safety systems[Adapted from 19].
problems are designed to help the student bridge the process Safety topic, with examples from three of the HIRA subtopics:
safety theory and practice, especially in context of all of their evaluate scenario impact; evaluate protection layers (barriers);
coursework. and manage risk (Figure 4, Table 6). These problem examples
This section provides five problem and solution examples only provide a sampling of the different types of problems
entered into the Concept Warehouse’s Process Safety topic which could be taught during a lecture using basic engineering
(pallet). These problems are organized within the Process science or management systems used for design, analysis, and
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 13
Example 5.1.1: The Effect of Release Height on the Downwind
Ground-Level Concentration
The plume from a constant release at a storage tank is illus-
trated in Figure 8. The equation for the maximum concentra-
tion is shown in Figure 9 [27]. This problem example uses a
“multiple choice—single right answer” question format.
Problem Statement: What is the effect of increasing the
release point height on the downwind ground-level
concentration?
All other terms being held constant, the downwind concen-
tration of the plume at ground-level will ________ as the
height of the release point increases.
decrease
Figure 8. A depiction of a gaseous plume release from an increase
elevated release point. [Color figure can be viewed at stay the same
wileyonlinelibrary.com] Problem Solution: The correct answer is “decrease.”
5.1 Example Problems for Estimating the Impact 5.2 Example Problem for Designing a Protection Layer
The two problem examples in this section address the (Barrier)
third question in the HIRA approach, “How bad could it be?,” The problem example in this section address the sixth ques-
which is used to estimate the impact of the loss of contain- tion in the HIRA approach, “What are the controls?,” further
ment (the release) of a hazardous material or energy delving into the types controls used to effectively manage the
(Section 4.2). risk: subtopic HIRA step 7) Evaluate Protection Layers (Barriers)
(Section 4.2). This problem focuses on a mitigative engineering
design: a pressure relief valve. This problem example uses a
“multiple choice—single right answer” question format.
The basic design of pressure protection systems is well-
established to ensure that the relief device will activate when
needed and protect the processing equipment and piping from
high pressure which can overpressurize the equipment. Over-
pressurized equipment can catastrophically fail and violently
explode. For example, the incident at Geismar resulted in two
fatalities and multiple injuries when a blocked-in boiler under
maintenance was heated [41]. The boiler’s line to its relief sys-
tem had been blocked and the rising pressure upon heating
eventually exceeded the boiler’s design pressure. A cross sec-
tional view of a Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) used for vessel
protection is shown in Figure 12. The seat is highlighted; it lifts
when the relief valve’s set pressure is exceeded, helping pre-
vent the equipment being protected from overpressurizing.
One parameter used in the PRV design calculations is the
vent area (A), as is shown in Eq. 1 [27].
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
Qv ρ
A¼ pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ð1Þ
Co 2gc ΔP
Figure 9. The equation for the maximum ground-level Example 5.2.1: Sizing the Diameter for a Pressure Relief Valve
concentration. [Color figure can be viewed at in Liquid Service
wileyonlinelibrary.com] Problem Statement: Two identical liquid phase Reactors
R-101 and R-102 have a Pressure Relief Valve (PRV) designed
14 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
Figure 10. Depiction of the fire extinguisher problem in the Concept Warehouse. [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Figure 11. Depiction of the fire extinguisher problem solution in the Concept Warehouse. [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
Process Safety Progress Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Month 2018 15
Management of Change
Operational Discipline
16 Month 2018 Published on behalf of the AIChE DOI 10.1002/prs Process Safety Progress
1. The AIChE Foundation’s Undergraduate Process Safety process safety, Education for Chemical Engineers 15
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safety-specific reviews by volunteers in the AIChE Safety & Health, and Loss Prevention in Chemical Processes, Prob-
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Although there are many colleagues who have influenced 13 September 2018, CCPS/AIChE (2018). Available at www.
the author to date, both directly and indirectly, this paper is aiche.org/ccps/resources/user-guide-and-manuals
dedicated to the many instructors and industrial volunteers 16. The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), and the
across the world, including those in the AIChE Safety and European Process Safety Centre (EPSC), “Chemical engineer-
Health Division Student Outreach Team, who over the ing fundamentals (CHEF) calculation aid software,”
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aiche.org/ccps/resources/user-guide-and-manuals
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18. The Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS), and the
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