Cost-effective maintenance of safety and security barriers in the chemical process industries via genetic algorithm

Chemical plants face safety hazards and security threats that may induce catastrophic scenarios. Safety and security barriers are employed widely to protect chemical plants from accidental and intentional undesired events and mitigate consequences. Managing safety and security barriers effectively and economically is a research topic with...

Uncertainties and their treatment in the quantitative risk assessment of domino effects: Classification and review

Domino accidents are typical low-frequency and high-consequence events in chemical process industries. Applying quantitative risk assessment (QRA) in domino accident assessment is challenging due to the uncertainties in the escalation process. Meanwhile, the outcomes of QRA are subject to a certain degree of unreliability due to the...

Dynamic-risk-informed safety barrier management: An application to cost-effective barrier optimization based on data from multiple sources

An integrated approach for performance assessment and management of safety barriers in a systemic manner is needed concerning the prevention and mitigation of major accidents in chemical process industries. Particularly, the effects of safety barriers on system risk reduction should be assessed in a dynamic manner to support the decision-making...

Integrated process safety and process security risk assessment of industrial cyber-physical systems in chemical plants

Aligned with the development needs of Industry 4.0, industrial cyber-physical systems (ICPSs) are widely applied to chemical facilities to facilitate so-called intelligent production processes. Meanwhile, emerging cyber-to-physical (C2P) risks are introduced due to the vulnerability of ICPSs to cyberattacks. An integrated safety and security...

Risk Analysis of Laboratory Fire Accidents in Chinese Universities by Combining Association Rule Learning and Fuzzy Bayesian Networks

Targeting the challenges in the risk analysis of laboratory fire accidents, particularly considering fire accidents in Chinese universities, an integrated approach is proposed with the combination of association rule learning, a Bayesian network (BN), and fuzzy set theory in this study. The proposed approach has the main advantages of deriving...

Occupational Health and Safety in China: A Systematic Analysis of Research Trends and Future Perspectives

The frequent occurrence of various occupational accidents has resulted in significant casualties and occupational disease issues, which hinder economic and social development seriously. The promotion and enhancement of occupational health and safety (OHS) require greater efforts to be made to achieve sustainable economic development,...

An integrated EDIB model for probabilistic risk analysis of natural gas pipeline leakage accidents

Natural gas pipeline construction is developing rapidly worldwide to meet the needs of international and domestic energy transportation. Meanwhile, leakage accidents occur to natural gas pipelines frequently due to mechanical failure, personal operation errors, etc., and induce huge economic property loss, environmental damages, and even...

Value of Safety

We witness many severe accidents in different sectors worldwide every year, resulting in fatalities, injuries, environmental pollution, property loss, etc. Safety management aims to use interventions to prevent these undesired events and thus avoid different kinds of loss. Various interventions that have different safety performances and costs...

An Exploratory Study on Uncertainty Analysis in Quantitative Risk Assessment of Domino Effects

Data uncertainties caused by the lack of knowledge and nature variation or randomness present vital challenges to domino effects modelling. To improve the assessment of the propagation probabilities and consequences of the domino-effect accidents, the influence of various types of uncertainties on risk assessment results needs to be investigated...

Safety barriers in the chemical process industries: A state-of-the-art review on their classification, assessment, and management

Barriers are used in various forms to assure the safety of chemical plants. A deep understanding of the literature related to safety barriers is essential to tackle the challenges in improving their design and management. This paper first provides an overview of the history of the development of the safety barrier concept. Subsequently, this...

An Approach for Identification of Integrated Safety and Security Barriers in the Chemical Process Industries

Chemical process industries are threatened with accidental and intentional adverse events because of the storage and operation of large quantities of hazardous substances. Safety and security barriers play important roles in protecting the chemical plants from safety and security-related undesired events and mitigating the potentially...

Safety barrier performance assessment by integrating computational fluid dynamics and evacuation modeling for toxic gas leakage scenarios

Toxic gas leakage represents a type of major process accident scenario threatening human life. Technical and non-technical safety barriers are employed to prevent toxic gas leakage accidents or mitigate the possible catastrophic consequences. Evacuation must be executed in severe toxic gas release scenarios. The performance assessment of...

Dynamic resilience assessment and emergency strategy optimization of natural gas compartments in utility tunnels

As a kind of critical infrastructure of energy transportation, so-called ‘utility tunnels’ have been developed around the world. Hosting a natural gas pipeline inside the natural gas compartment of a utility tunnel facilitates its maintenance but also brings potential explosion concerns due to the confined space. Although some work focuses on...

The Necessity of Integrating Safety and Security Barriers in the Chemical Process Industries and its Potential Framework

Safety and security barriers are implemented in various forms to protect chemical plants from undesired accidents and mitigate the disastrous consequences. However, the necessity and rationality of integrating safety and security barriers need to be investigated, and the difficulty in integrated management of safety and security barriers is...

Kinetic Analysis of Thermal Decomposition Process of Emulsion Explosive Matrix in the Presence of Sulfide Ores

This study aims to characterize the whole reaction process of (i) emulsion explosive matrix and sulfide ores, and (ii) ammonium nitrate and pyrite by the thermodynamics analysis method. A series of experiments were carried out at atmospheric pressure from 25 °C to 350 °C at four heating rates (3, 5, 10, and 15 K/min) and the Coats–Redfern method...

(Petro)chemische clusters en veiligheid: Een clusterspecifieke rangschikking van veiligheidsparameters

Kenmerkend voor bedrijven die in een cluster gelegen zijn, zijn de onderlinge risico’s waarbij de risico’s van één bedrijf aanleiding kunnen geven tot nieuwe risico’s bij een aangrenzend of een nabijgelegen bedrijf. Daarbij gaat het om de mogelijkheid op domino-effecten, keteneffecten, of nadelige effecten (letsel/schade). Voor (petro)chemische...