Plant/ Industrial Safety - My Understanding In 30 Minutes

Well, doesn’t the theme of this week’s two blogs seem to be about plant/industrial safety?  I’m pretty sure that’s very important to a chemical engineer. Again, I got my main source of knowledge from an article on chemengonline.com (proving to be a good source of interesting news). This article was on process safety and functional safety.

I looked at the Health and SafetyExecutive to find out some information on chemical industry related accidents in the UK, so I could get an idea of how many there has been and how much damage they cause. From a table in the ‘review of high-cost chemical/petrochemical accidents since Flixborough1974’ I can see that there have been 20 high cost accidents as well as another 25 other additional accidents on to of these. From this I can deduce that accidents do occur in these very dangerous industries (when you think about the materials/chemicals they use). Having said this, this particular review mentioned the Flixborough accident that occurred in the UK in 1974. I have not previously heard of this accident, I mean I wasn’t even born then, but having briefly looked it up, it seems to have been a tragic event.

The Flixborough incident from my understanding occurred due to a crack in a reactor, which consequently leaked cyclohexane before it could be prevented. The mixture of cyclohexane and air became ignited and caused an explosion killing 28 people and injuring 36, which is extremely unfortunate.

Essentially to prevent accidents like this occurring the industry has to be able to reduce any existing rick and reduce it to a manageable level, accidents do and will happen, but we can control their possibility none the less. Some ways to reduce risk are:

• considering emerging new technologies that could help lower risks
• understanding hazards
• understanding potential/common-cause failures
• ensuring network security 
• learning from past incidents 

(methods take from process safety and functional safety)

Main Sources Used:
[1]http://www.chemengonline.com/process-safety-functional-safety-support-asset-productivity-integrity/?pagenum=1

Textile Industry Pollution - A Casual Blog Post

I’m thinking of mixing in more "casual" blog posts to do with chemical engineering in between the ‘My Understanding in 30 Minutes’ series. Mainly this is because it’s quite hard finding news directly linked to chemical engineering. By this I mean that although I understanding chemical engineering is involved in a lot of what I read in the news about industry, I want it to be more explicitly linked to chemical engineering itself… otherwise I will just be making assumptions? And I want facts. So, since I can’t find anything interesting today, specific to chemical engineering that is, I will write my first ‘A Casual Blog Post’ and mix some Chemical Engineering into it.

On Chemical & Engineering News, I read an article called “Cutting Out Textile Pollution”. Obviously this caught my attention due to the key word pollution. So in terms of chemical engineering, a chemical engineer can work in the textile’s industry in improving the chemical and water processes they use. And that’s all good, but really, the textile industry needs to want this change. Most textile manufacturing takes place in third-world countries, I don’t really even need to look this up, its known through my general knowledge and teaching at school that this is the case. So the problem is, if most of this manufacturing takes place in a poor country, those who are in charge of the factories are unlikely to buy or invest in anything that will improve the rates of pollution. Who cares about pollution when profits are at stake, right?
The main polluting hazard of a textiles industry, from my understanding, would be the dyes that can contaminate, and DO contaminate, water. According to the World Bank, 20% of global industrial water pollution is as a result of the textiles industry, it is the second biggest clean water pollutant to agriculture. Which is quite a big deal.

This was a pretty casual blog post, with an unfinished feel to it, but I just wanted to show that 1) I have an interest in the sustainability of our planet 2) industries really need to start doing something about how much they pollute and 3) that chemical engineering, as always, can have a huge role in this industry.

Sources used:
[1] http://www.sustainablecommunication.org/eco360/what-is-eco360s-causes/water-pollution
[2] http://cen.acs.org/articles/93/i41/Cutting-Textile-Pollution.html 

Sulfuric Acid Storage - My Understanding in 30 Minutes

A recent article on ‘chemengonline’ was to do with sufuric acid and the storage and safety surrounding this chemical in chemical process industries. I found this topic interesting as in A2 Chemistry I frequently see H2S04 as a reagent for many organic reactions. In industry this acid is important in the processes making fertilisers, which essentially help feed the population.

Sulfuric acid is a strong acid and when in contact with the skin it can cause severe burns and damage, the acid is therefore also harmful to the environment, for example if it gets into ground water. Now, having established the dangers of sulfuric acid, we can see the importance of keeping this acid well stored in industrial process as the acid is in massive quantities. Over the last year there have been many various accidents involving sulfuric acid spillages and release, so clearly there are still some problems solved to ensure accidents are kept to a minimum, or non-existent rate.

There are, however, a few ways to ensureH2SO4 stays safely stored:

• Corrosion control: which can be through methods of hydrogen grooving and boundary layer corrosion. However these methods are quite dangerous as they form hydrogen gas, which is flammable and can cause tank explosions and thus spillage of H2SO4. 

• Inspection checks: that are frequent enough to state the tank in which the H2SO4 is contained is the standard. However, switching between tanks may also cause potential leakage.

• Secondary containment: can be used, from my understanding, as a back-up measure in the case of a spillage/leak by somehow surrounding the main tank containing the H2SO4.

• Health and safety: is also vital for the environment and workers, so everyone must be aware of the issues with H2SO4 and precautions to maintain minimal risk

… Of course there are many more ways and methods of ensuring safe storage of sulfuric acid, however these were the main ones I understood. I think this is important in chemical engineering as chemical engineers also have to be cautious to the chemicals that will be in systems they create and they have to be aware of how to minimise the potential environmental and human damage of industrial processes.



Sources Used:
[1]http://www.chemengonline.com/safety-sulfuric-acid-storage-tanks/?pagenum=1
[2]http://www.sulphuric-acid.com/techmanual/Plant_Safety/safety_accidents.htm