Project Synopsis
Develop a summary table of safe operating limits (SOLs) for each of the processing units within a U.S. based refinery.
Project Summary
DEVELOPMENT OF REFINERY SAFE OPERATING LIMITS
The client owns and operates a petroleum refinery in the United States. Process Engineering Associates, LLC (PROCESS) was contracted to develop a summary table of safe operating limits (SOLs) for each of the processing units in the refinery to help the client fulfill its obligations specified in the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals Regulation, 29 CFR 1910.119.
PROCESS used information contained in the following sources provided by the client to develop the SOL tables: piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), process flow diagrams (PFDs), operating procedures, alarm summary tables, current alarm settings in the Distributed Control System (DCS), control room panel alarms, results from current Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) tables, cause and effect diagrams, detailed process descriptions, and processing unit log sheets. When possible, these documents were used to select SOLs for the process units. In addition, experienced plant personnel were interviewed to determine a SOL if the aforementioned documentation did not yield one.
The SOL Table for a given process unit lists the deviation from pertinent process parameters (e.g., temperature, pressure, flow), the safe upper or lower safe operating limit, consequence(s) of exceeding the safe operating limit, detection capabilities, automatic corrective actions, and manual corrective actions.
PROCESS‘ execution of this project will help bring the refinery into compliance with the regulatory requirements for process safety information and operating procedures and provide operations personnel with a useful training tool and guidance for safe limits of process operations.
Industry Type
- Petroleum Refining
Utilized Skills
- Operations support documentation development
- Process Safety Management compliance assistance