In August 2017, a major fire occurred at a refinery in the Netherlands when a furnace tube ruptured. The furnace was overheated when the process flow through it stopped, but the burners…

A large plant was restarting after hydrotesting the steam superheater coils on a reformer furnace. No modification had been made to the coils. The locking pins on spring hangers for the pendant…

On July 20, 2020, a 35-year-old worker was fatally injured while working on a road construction project in New York state. The cause was severe heat illness, often called Heat Stroke. The…

In 2021, three contract workers at a facility in La Porte, Texas, were removing the actuator from a plug valve. The actuator was being removed so the valve could be used as…

Case study1An operator was screening a pharmaceutical powder by manually loading a mechanical vibrating sieve. The sieved powder was collected below in a stainless steel drum on a dolly with insulating (nylon)…

An incident occurred on a 70-foot (21m) tall equipment platform when a contractor pipefitter applied excess torque to tighten flange bolts on a heat exchanger outlet pipe containing gaseous hydrogen chloride (HCl),…

An audit team was touring a newly installed load/unload station. A team member saw two hose reels near the station, both with the same-colored hose and the same connectors. One was labeled…

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Bhopal disaster where highly toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC) was released from a storage tank. This event caused thousands of fatalities. None of the safeguards…

Process Safety communities around the world are working together to present the 1st International Process Safety Week [IPSW] on 2-6 December 2024. Process Safety needs relentless vigilance. The IPSW is intended to…

Thirty-five years ago, 85,000 pounds (39 metric tons) of process gas, mostly ethylene, were released from a plastics plant in Pasadena, Texas. The cloud ignited two minutes later. Debris flew as far…