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Environment, Health, Safety & Security

Combustible Dust safety

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Admin. (OSHA; Washington, D.C.; www.osha.gov) has flagged combustible dusts as one of its top issues since the Imperial Sugar Mill explosion in Port Wentworth, Georgia, that killed 14 employees and injured many others in…

Small-company safety

Some injuries are permanent; some injuries are total. People who work for, or near, small companies need to be protected just as much as those associated with large companies. Small companies, however, usually cannot afford to employ full-time, certified, degreed,…

Gas Hazard Definitions and Data

The detection of gases in plant environments has a critical and wide-ranging role in the chemical process industries (CPI). Among the major applications of gas detection are limiting personnel exposure to hazardous chemicals, preventing explosive atmospheres, protecting the environment and…

Safety-Instrumented Systems: Focus on Measurement Diagnostics

This article provides guidance to the designer and operator of a safety-instrumented system (SIS), with an emphasis on conducting measurements. The use of best practices to ensure the strength of the overall system design, and the use of instrument diversity…

The Direct Integration Method: A Best Practice for Relief Valve Sizing

What if someone were to tell you that there is one method available for sizing relief valves that applies to virtually every situation, including two-phase flow and supercritical fluids? And what if they told you that method is more accurate…

Runaway Reactions: Ignore the Chemistry at Your Peril

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Avoiding Runaway Reactions

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Design Safety Instrumented Systems with Relevant Data

Users design safety instrumented systems to bring the risk of identified process hazards to within tolerable levels, using application-specific risk models, user inspection schedules, and safety data for the devices under consideration. A key problem when designing such systems is…

A step toward mineralizing CO2 captured from fluegas

Researchers from Newcastle University (U.K.; www.ncl.ac.uk) have discovered that, in the presence of a nickel catalyst, CO2 can be rapidly and cheaply converted into solid carbonate salts. The discovery could lead to a simpler and less-expensive alternative for carbon capture…

A cheaper way to destroy organic contaminants?

An ultraviolet oxidation process for the destruction of water-borne organic contaminants that combines UV with chlorine, rather than hydrogen peroxide, is being developed by MIOX Corp. (Albuquerque, N.M.; www.miox.com). The company’s Advanced Oxidation Process (AOP) promises to be less expensive…