Chemical Engineering May 2021 - 35

Advanced Analytics
for Process Safety
S
imply by the nature of some of the
chemicals used and the associated
complex processes involved, chemical
plants can be hazardous. With
the potential exposure to toxic substances,
fires and explosions, incidents can range from
minor to extremely serious. They can also result
in significant plant damage, injuries, and
sometimes even loss of life. Furthermore,
major chemical manufacturing incidents can
also have a catastrophic impact on the surrounding
community and environment. Some
examples of serious chemical accidents in
recent years include the following:
* The Williams Olefins Chemical Plant in
Geismar, Louisiana in 2013 [1]- A reboiler
rupture resulted in a vapor cloud ignition,
due to an unknown source of fire or heat
that resulted in two fatalities
* Chevron Oil Refinery in Richmond, California
in 2013 [2] - Personnel accidentally
triggered a spark as they worked to remove
insulation from an extremely old pipe that
was already leaking crude oil, which resulted
in a catastrophic explosion
* Danlin Chemical Plant in Thomas, Oklahoma
in 2013 [3] - A fire from an unknown
source engulfed the plant, which caused
explosions of pressurized containers
* Jiangsu Tianjiayi Chemical Plant2 in
Yancheng Jiangsu Province, China in 2019
[4] - A fire from an unknown source spread
to pesticides storage containers causing an
immense explosion
* Philadelphia Energy Solutions Complex in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 2019 [5] - The
failure of a corroded pipe resulted in a fire that
triggered three massive explosions and the
release of 5,239 lb of toxic hydrofluoric acid
Although there can be numerous potential
causes for chemical industrial incidents, one
cause is equipment failure. The industry continually
faces challenges to ensure proper
plant process safety and reduce the risk of
incidents. Additional challenges facing the
industry include improving plant efficiency,
increasing product quality and production
yield, and reducing energy consumption.
The chemical process industries (CPI) can
achieve all of these, along with improved
process safety efforts, through the adoption
and use of advanced self-service analytics.
FIGURE 1. This photo shows two critical ethanol pumps
in parallel that deliver a high-pressure recycle stream to a
packed-bed reactor [6]
A new era of safe processing
CPI plants today capture an immense amount
of process data, all of which can - and
should - be leveraged to better understand
chemical processes. Traditionally, when incidents
occur, global process experts and data
scientists are often brought in. They will then
" deep dive " into historical time-series data
and construct mathematical models to help
local production teams better understand
what happened and determine how they can
prevent future incidents. This approach can
be inefficient, however, as there are rarely
enough global experts and data scientists for
the amount of work needed. It is also costly
and time-consuming.
A more viable and efficient approach
would be to equip process experts with the
tools to perform the analytics themselves.
This is where advanced self-service analytics
comes in play. This tool brings significant
value as it allows the process experts to do
CHEMICAL ENGINEERING WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM MAY 2021
35
Cover Story
Part 2
A look at how advanced analytics facilitates and improves process safety efforts within the
chemical process industries (CPI)
Michael Chang
TrendMiner
http://WWW.CHEMENGONLINE.COM
Chemical Engineering May 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Chemical Engineering May 2021
