Predicting major hazard accidents by monitoring their barrier systems: A validation in retrospective

OCI Nitrogen, one of Europe's largest fertilizer producers, is investigating the extent to which it is possible to take targeted measures at an early stage and stop the development of major hazard accident processes. An innovative model has been developed and recently explained and elaborated in a number of publications. This current paper...

Predicting major accidents in the process industry based on the barrier status at scenario level: A practical approach

OCI Nitrogen wants to gain knowledge of (leading) indicators regarding the process safety performance of their ammonia production process. This paper answers the question whether indicators can be derived from the barrier system status to provide information about the development and likelihood of the major accident processes in the ammonia...

Determining a realistic ranking of the most dangerous process equipment of the ammonia production process: A practical approach

OCI Nitrogen seeks to gain knowledge of (leading) indicators regarding the process safety performance of their ammonia production process. The current research determines the most dangerous process equipment by calculating their effects resulting from a loss of containment using DNV GL's Phast™ dispersion model. In this paper, flammable and...

Mechanical integrity of process installations: Barrier alarm management based on bowties

A Safety Research project was carried out in an ammonia plant of OCI Nitrogen, located at the Chemelot site in Geleen, The Netherlands. This research focused on the development of a method to monitor accident processes in the chemical industry mainly caused by mechanical integrity of static equipment like vessels, tanks and heat exchangers. A...