Risk Assessment Report For Process Plant Design And Operation

Environmental, Fire and Explosion Hazards in Process Plant

The report is based on risk assessment for the process plant design and operation. The plant design is considered towards safety in operations of the process plant. This paper also determines to analyze environmental, fire and explosion hazards with covering the issues and measures to eliminate the possible hazards into the plant. Haugen et al., (2018) stated that risk assessment is used to describe entire process and methods where there is required to identify the hazard as well as risk factors which have potential to cause the harms. There is required of analyze in addition to evaluate the risks which are associated with the identified hazards. Abimbola, Khan and Khakzad (2014) discussed that risk assessment is required to identify as well as analyze of potential events which are negatively provide an impact on the individuals as well as assets.

The purpose of risk assessment report is to evaluate competence of the environmental, fire and explosion hazards. It provides with a structured qualitative assessment of operational environments of plant. The assessment is recommended of cost efficient safeguards for mitigation of threats along with linked vulnerabilities. Risk analysis is done by identification of various hazards, consideration of consequences, and risk value. It is also evaluated probabilities and consequences of the possible hazards.

Following are the environmental, fire and explosion hazards which are caused into the process plant such as:

Fire and explosion hazards: Fire is a common hazard into the process plant as well as operations as it is caused when proper maintenance of the alarms and detectors are not done properly. The factors which are caused of fire hazards are failure of electrical equipments, improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant and carelessness from the operator side into the plant site (Modarres, Kaminskiy, & Krivtsov, 2016). The plant has consisted of chemical damage system as well as other equipments which are caused of loss of containment, explosions. The hackers may hack the fire alarm system and create of various false alarms which could render unreliable. As fire alarm system is required to protect life as well as property, therefore it causes of critical hazards into the organization (Modarres, 2016). When a fire starts at the plant, then it puts risks on the expensive equipments, safety of the workers, and also environment. Arson may often cause into the process plant buildings, which would put entire plant on fire. Therefore, in order to control this hazard, fire protection guidelines are to be followed such as “NFPA 30, API RP 2001, API Publ 2218”. The explosion caused into the process plant is a worst case of result of fire, which will damage the entire plant, and there is catastrophic release of the energy which are causing of pressure wave.

Environmental hazards: The environment of process plant is consisted of both internal along with external surrounding of the plant. The environmental factors are bunds, fences, drainage, and safety of the operators, emissions from the process plant and waste products from the plant (Smith, 2017). Into the process plant as well as operation, there are waste products which are come from the plant as output and caused damage to the entire environment. It is caused environmental pollution due to waste disposal and hazardous gases. The waste materials are contaminated the raw materials and provided a negative effect on the final products (Pidgeon et al., 2018). Those wastes can affect the staffs working into the process plant and also cause tragic health complications. The adverse environment is affected of chlorofluorocarbons. Into the process plant, the chemicals are being involved which cause damage to the operators, plant and also public. The plant is handled of acids which provide a high impact on the environment surrounding to the process plant (Larsson, 2015). The environment becomes dusty, hot or cold, and therefore the plant operator should take of appropriate protective gear. Emissions from the plant, odors in addition to by-products pose the health risks by pollution of the surrounded environment. The gases and fumes from the process plant caused air pollution that may affect both plant as well as animals surrounded the environment.

Factors Leading to Risks of Hazards

Operational hazards: The employees those are working into the organization are unsatisfied with the jobs and they become disgruntled. It leads to certain type of the employee’s sabotage. The employees are angry on the management team and their organizational procedures which began to slack their efforts (Aven, 2016). There are malicious attract through social media where the hackers can steal the confidential information. In social media threat, when the attacker can compromise the social networking site by means of malicious code, then the visitor to the site is susceptible to the attack (Farsalinos & Polosa, 2014). It would compromise the computers those are gathering of personal information and other confidential information related to the process plant. There is possibility of plane crash on the plant, so that entire plant should damage and it would affect entire business operations of the plant (Bahr, 2014). There is possibility of loss of vital data of the organization so that all important and confidential data related to the organizational privacy are lost when it is stolen by any other third party person or organizations.

Type of hazard	Factors	Details of factors	Nature of risk	Likelihood	Consequence
Environmental hazard	Emissions from the process plant	The adverse environment is affected due to emission of chlorofluorocarbons.	High or tolerable risk	Possible	Moderate
Waste products from the plant	Emissions from the plant, odors in addition to by-products pose the health risks by pollution of the surrounded environment	Extreme or intolerable risk	Possible	Major
Fire and explosion hazard	Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors	When the fire alarms and detectors are not maintained properly by the process plant operator.	Moderate or tolerable risk	Unlikely	Moderate
Failure of electrical equipments	The entire process plant is worked based on the electrical work, therefore when there is any failure of the equipments, and then there is possibility of explosions into the plant.	High or tolerable risk	Likely	Minor
Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant	The raw materials which are used into the process plant are not maintained properly and all the equipments are back dated which are caused of fire and explosion risks.	Moderate or tolerable risk	Unlikely	Moderate
Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site	Lack of care of the plant equipments and fire alarming system are caused of hazards into the process plant (Esmaeili, Hallowell, & Rajagopalan, 2015).	Low or negligible risk	Unlikely	Minor
	Cyber attack to disable fire alarm	The hackers may hack the fire alarm system and create of various false alarms which could render unreliable	Moderate or tolerable risk	Unlikely	Moderate
Arson	Arson may often cause into the process plant buildings, which would put entire plant on fire (Adeleye et al., 2015).	Low or negligible risk	Rare	Minor
Operational hazards	Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	The employees are angry on the management team and their organizational procedures which began to slack their efforts.	Moderate or tolerable risk	Possible	Minor
Malicious attract through social media	The attacker can compromise the social networking site by means of malicious code, and then the visitor to the site is susceptible to the attack (Sarkar, Vinay, & Maiti, 2016).	Moderate or tolerable risk	Unlikely	Moderate
Plane crash on the plant	The entire plant should damage and it would affect entire business operations of the plant.	Low or negligible risk	Rare	Insignificant
Loss of vital data	The confidential data related to the organizational privacy are lost and stolen by third party organizations (Aven, 2016).	Extreme or intolerable risk	Possible	Major

Consequences
Likelihood	Insignificant	Minor	Moderate	Major	Catastrophic
Almost certain
Likely		Failure of electrical equipments
Possible		Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	Emissions from the process plant	Waste products from the plant Loss of vital data
Unlikely		Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site	Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors, Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant, Cyber attack to disable fire alarm Malicious attract through social media
Rare	Plane crash on the plant	Arson

Table 1: Risk matrix (likelihood-consequences)

From the above table, it is analysed that the factors of both environmental as well as fire and explosion hazards are assessed based on risk priority such as:

Type of hazard	Factors	Nature of risk	Risk priority
Environmental hazard	Emissions from the process plant	High or tolerable risk	Attention is required
Waste products from the plant	Extreme or intolerable risk	Immediate actions are required.
Fire and explosion hazard	Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors	Moderate or tolerable risk	Responsibility must require specifying.
Failure of electrical equipments	High or tolerable risk	Attention is required
Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant	Moderate or tolerable risk	Responsibility must require specifying (Suter, 2016).
Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site	Low or negligible risk	Manage by the routine procedures.
Cyber attack to disable fire alarm	Moderate or tolerable risk	Responsibility must require specifying (Reason, 2016).
Arson	Low or negligible risk	Manage by the routine procedures.
Operational hazard	Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	Moderate or tolerable risk	Responsibility must require specifying (Dalezios, 2017).
Malicious attract through social media	Moderate or tolerable risk	Responsibility must require specifying.
Plane crash on the plant	Low or negligible risk	Manage by the routine procedures (Ericson, 2015).
Loss of vital data	Extreme or intolerable risk	Immediate actions are required.

Type of hazard	Factors	Probability	Consequences	Risk value
Environmental hazard	Emissions from the process plant	Occasional (4)	Moderate (3)	4*3 = 12
Waste products from the plant	Frequent (5)	Major (4)	5*4= 20
Fire and explosion hazard	Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors	Remote (3)	Moderate (3)	3*3 = 9
Failure of electrical equipments	Unlikely (2)	Minor (2)	2*2= 4
Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant	Occasional (4)	Moderate (3)	4*3= 12
Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site (Lundgren & McMakin, 2018)	Remote (3)	Minor (2)	3*2= 6
Cyber attack to disable fire alarm	Remote (3)	Moderate (3)	3*3 = 9
Arson	Rare (1)	Insignificant (1)	1*1= 1
Operational hazard	Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	Remote (3)	Minor (2)	3*2= 6
Malicious attract through social media	Occasional (4)	Minor (2)	4*2= 8
Plane crash on the plant	Rare (1)	Insignificant (1)	1*1= 1
Loss of vital data	Remote (3)	Moderate (3)	3*3 = 9

Consequences
Probability	Insignificant (1)	Minor (2)	Moderate (3)	Major (4)	Catastrophic (5)
Frequent (5)				Waste products from the plant
Occasional (4)		Malicious attract through social media	Emissions from the process plant, Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant
Remote (3)		Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors Cyber attack to disable fire alarm Loss of vital data
Unlikely (2)		Failure of electrical equipments
Rare (1)	Arson Plane crash on the plant

Table 2: Risk matrix (probability-consequences)

From the above table, it is seen that the highest risk is waste products from the process plant which are required to be mitigated on time so that it does not harm both internal as well as external environment of process plant so that environmental hazards are to be prevented to occur (Kokangül, Polat, & Dagsuyu, 2017).

	Very likely-could happen at any time	Likely- could happen sometime	Unlikely- could happen but very rarely	Very unlikely- could happen but probably never will
Emissions from the process plant	1	1	2	5
Waste products from the plant	1	1	4	5
Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors	1	2	2	5
Failure of electrical equipments	1	1	3	4
Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant	1	3	4	5
Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site	1	2	5	4
Cyber attack to disable fire alarm	1	1	2	4
Arson	1	4	3	5
Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	1	1	4	5
Malicious attract through social media	1	3	5	5
Plane crash on the plant	2	4	3	4
Loss of vital data	1	1	2	5

From the above table, it is analysed that among all the operational, environmental and fire and explosion risks, most extreme risks and that should be taken at highest priority are fire and explosion risks (Flin & Arbuthnot, 2017). Those risks are mitigated on time before it provides any effect on the business operations of the process plant.

Hazard and operability study is proper examination of the existing processes or operation to identify as well as evaluate the problems which represent of risks to the personnel along with equipments (Bahr, 2014). The method is aimed to stimulate imagination of the participants for identifying the potential hazards as well as operability issues.

Parameter	Guideword	Possible causes	Consequences	Action	Safeguard
Hazardous gases	High	Emissions from the process plant	Moderate	Follow of environmental policies and regulations	Environmental rules
Wastage of products	Too high	Waste products from the plant	Major	All the products are stored into secured place so that it will not come in contract with the environment (Thompson et al., 2016).	Environmental rules
Failure of alarm system	Medium	Improper maintenance of the alarms and detectors	Moderate	Fire protection guidelines are to be followed such as “NFPA 30, API RP 2001”.	Fire alarm regulations
Failure of the equipments	High	Failure of electrical equipments	Minor	All the electrical equipments are to be maintained by the electrical staffs.	Environmental rules
Lack of raw materials	Medium	Improper handling of the raw materials into the process plant	Moderate	Proper management of the raw materials are required into the process plant (Pasman, Rogers, s& Mannan, 2017).	Environmental rules
Lack of care from the operator site	Too low	Carelessness from the operator side into the plant site	Minor	The operator should care about the plant site.	Environmental rules
Fire	Medium	Cyber attack to disable fire alarm	Moderate	Proper security is required so that the fire alarm system should not be hacked by third party person.	Fire alarm regulations
Fire and explosion	Too low	Arson	Minor	Proper protection guidelines are required to be followed.	Fire alarm regulations
Employee dissatisfaction	Medium	Sabotage by a disgruntled former employee	Minor	The management team should provide proper support to the employee so that they are not dissatisfied with the jobs into the organization (Adeleye et al., 2015).	Operational rules and regulations
Lack of malicious code	Medium	Malicious attract through social media	Moderate	The social media site should be kept with proper password protected so that no other person can share any confidential information.	Operational rules and regulations
Operational	Too low	Plane crash on the plant	Insignificant	The process plant should provide proper security services around the plat so that no plane may enter within 1000 metre radius of the plant.	Operational rules and regulations
Loss of data	Too high	Loss of vital data	Major	The data should be kept two ways authentication protected such that third party cannot access to the data (Modarres, Kaminskiy, & Krivtsov, 2016).	Operational rules and regulations

Conclusion and Recommendations

Conclusion

It is concluded that into the process plant, there are mainly three types of hazards which are occurred such as environmental risks, fire and explosion risks and also operational risks. The risk management processes used to examine work area as well as work completed for purpose to identify the hazards inherent to the job site. It is required to evaluate likelihood of the injuries those are occurred along with there is estimation of severe the injuries are occurred. The analyst has used of risk matrix which is used to provide with guidance as whether the risks are acceptable and required to address.

It is recommended that the process plant should provide with framework to design as well as manage organizational health and safety guidelines so that all the hazards are to be mitigated before it hampers the likelihood of adverse health effects of the workplace linked with the injuries as well as exposures. The management team should involve with systematic approach to identify as well as characterize the environmental, fire, explosion as well as operational hazards to the individuals into the process plant environment.

References

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