Captive Key Interlocks – Description, Use, and LOPA Analysis

Captive key interlocks are one of the most powerful, yet underutilized, safeguards in the process industries.  Captive key systems function by preventing a physical action, such as opening a valve, unless an engineered key has been inserted into the valve’s topworks.  Once the valve is moved, the key cannot be removed until the valve has been completely cycled.  This physical interlocking enforces a specific sequence of operations and prevents valve misalignment, improper opening, and other potentially catastrophic operational errors. These interlocks are simple and effective.  Essentially, they can only fail if they are installed incorrectly or physically tampered with, making their PFD dramatically lower than other active safeguarding measures.

This webinar will begin with a description and explanation of operation using a typical application by Ginny Vance of Sofis.  Subsequently, Ed Marszal of Kenexis will demonstrate how to account for the use of captive key interlocks in LOPA by presenting a LOPA scenario for the typical oil and gas application of Pig Launcher valve sequencing.

Recorded webinar

Hydrogen Gas Detection For Electrolyzers

Engineers in the chemical process industries face the task of shifting society away from energy sources that emit carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases. While numerous methods of storing green energy are being considered, there is significant interest in converting green electricity into chemical energy that is easier to store and transport. The most common approach involves producing hydrogen from water through electrolysis and utilizing the hydrogen directly or converting it into ammonia or other chemicals for improved transportability and energy density.

Hydrogen is emerging as a prominent candidate for driving the transition to green energy. However, like any potential energy source, hydrogen can pose risks if mishandled, as hydrogen is highly flammable, oxygen acts as an oxidizer. Consequently, the release of hydrogen can create hazardous conditions with significant safety implications. To mitigate these risks, a widely used safety measure is the implementation of a gas detection system with automatic shutdown capabilities.

Webinar Registration

Fault Tree Analysis to Extend LOPA for Shared Components

The Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) is widely used in the process industries as a tool to assess hazards and risks. Typically, organizations in the chemical process industry employ a process hazards analysis (PHA) program, which begins with a facilitated workshop study, often using techniques like hazards and operability studies (HAZOP). This study triggers further analysis in certain situations, such as scenarios involving high consequences, complexity, quantitative performance targets for safeguards, very high-cost recommendations, or insufficient risk assessment. In such cases, additional analysis, often more comprehensive than the PHA, is necessary. LOPA is frequently chosen as the technique of choice, as it is more comprehensive than PHA but less resource-intensive than fully quantified risk analysis.

However, there are pitfalls that can make LOPA ineffective and lead to excessively pessimistic results, which may require costly safeguards. If LOPA presents inappropriate results, alternative quantitative tools should be considered to address its limitations. These tools need not be used to their fullest extent, but rather selectively applied to specific applications where LOPA is inadequate. Some of these quantitative tools include dispersion models, explosion models, consequence effects models, event tree analysis, quantitative bowtie analysis, and fault tree analysis.

Webinar Registration

Adding Gasses and Equipment to Buildings

Altering a building’s original purpose by adding process equipment and dangerous gases can have significant implications for the safety of the building and its occupants. Whether it is apparently minor or major, significant modifications to the building’s structure, electrical and plumbing systems, and ventilation, among other things may be required for safety purposes.

The addition of process equipment and dangerous gases introduces new hazards into the building, including the risk of fire, explosion, and toxic gas leaks. This requires careful planning and implementation to ensure that the building’s safety systems can effectively manage these hazards.

Moreover, regulatory compliance may be necessary to ensure that the building meets all applicable safety standards, such as building codes, environmental regulations, and occupational safety requirements. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in fines, legal liability, and potentially serious safety consequences.

In summary, altering a building’s original purpose by adding process equipment and dangerous gases requires careful planning, implementation, and regulatory compliance to ensure the safety of the building and its occupants.

Webinar Registration

How to Quickly Determine if Safety Functions are Vulnerable to a Cybersecurity Threat

In this webinar, we will briefly cover the good cybersecurity principles like backing up everything, restricting access, and the other top ten things everyone should already be doing at a minimum. Then we will dive into how to perform a Security PHA Review (SPR) of your HAZOPs. An SPR is designed to help you quickly determine if any of your safety functions are vulnerable to a cybersecurity threat.

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration 

Quantitative Bowtie

Research into Unified Hazard Assessment combining HAZOP, LOPA, and Quantitative Bowtie Analysis has yielded techniques that elegantly address the limitations of LOPA and provided a significantly improved graphical communications method. This recorded webinar provides background on how Unified Hazard Assessment yielded the techniques of Quantitative Bowtie analysis. The webinar will also describe in detail how to implement quantitative bowtie analysis along with the mathematical concepts used for quantification of risk for multiple causes and multiple consequences inside a single scenario. The concepts will be presented using example studies that include mitigative safeguards and multiple cause scenarios.

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration

Can I see your Functional Safety Management Program documentation?

Planning Functional Safety (with Template Procedure)

A part of the IEC 61511 standard that does not get the attention that it deserves is clause 5 – Management of Functional Safety.

While most engineers want to focus on detailed design, risk analysis and SIL verification calculations, it is the management aspect that addresses the human failure portion of the risk equation.

In clause 5 we define the need for a plan to be made for functional safety.  This plan needs to include the definition of tasks that occur during the SIS safety lifecycle along with assignments of who is responsible for these tasks.  This clause also addresses items like competency and the assignment of SIS tasks to external organizations.

In this webinar we will highlight some of the information that is contained in the Kenexis course – SIS Management responsibilities.  We will then move on to an explanation of the Kenexis Template SIS Safety Lifecycle Procedure along with recommendations on how to customize it for your organization.  If you do not already have a safety lifecycle management procedure, this webinar and the template are a great starting point that will honestly get you most of the way to where you need to be.

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration

Why is that Detector There

Have you ever wondered why a gas or fire detector is installed at a location. Maybe someone walking through your facility asked you why a detector was installed at a particular location. Scrambling to find an answer at that point is probably useless, you already revealed that you don’t know and maybe no one else onsite knows.

In this webinar we will quickly go through how we engineer where detectors are positioned and some of the science behind the engineering. We will discuss the process and even design a small system live and calculate coverage to see if it meets the requirements.

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration

SIS and BPCS Component Sharing

There is still some confusion about a key attribute of good Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) design – specifically separation of Basic Process Control Systems (BPCS) and Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS). In this live webinar, we will cover Definitions and Standards Requirements, Assessment of Independence – Shared Valve System, Quantitative Justification of Shared Component, Additional Standards Requirements, Design of SIS Separation Workflow

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration

Risk Assessment and Safeguarding of Lithium Ion Battery Containing Facilities

Join us for a recorded webinar discussing the challenges associated with Risk Assessment and Safeguarding of Lithium Ion Battery Containing Facilities

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration

Determining and Documenting Appropriate Leak Tightness Requirements

This webinar goes into detail about the differences between tight shut off and leakage rate methods, the standards, and how to determine the correct leak requirements for your situation.

Previously Recorded Webinar Registration