PETN workshop in Austin Red Diamond (RD) Plant-February 2023
By Andy Begg
Austin Powder installed a new continuous PETN process at the RD facility several years ago. The plant was the most recent design and very similar to one installed by EXSA in their Lima Plant. The start-up and initial operation of the Austin plant identified a number of process safety issues as did the EXSA plant in Lima. Austin and EXSA agreed to share their process safety experiences with a view to learning from each other and improving the safety of their respective plants. This proved to be successful and sharing continued including reciprocal visits of plant and technical personnel between the plants.
Dyno also had a similar continuous process but with more operating experience and at the suggestion of Austin it was decided to host a workshop specifically on process safety and operating experiences on the continuous PETN process. A workshop with a small number of invited attendees took place in RD in 2019 and this was followed by a second workshop in February 2023. Each participant was expected to make at least one relevant presentation
The topics dealt with at the second workshop included:
- Incident reviews – 4 presentations
- PETN properties and testing – 3 presentations
- Waste Water issues – 2 presentations
- Process and Operation – 6 presentations
- Process and Safety Improvements – 6 presentations
It became clear that many of the issues presented and discussed in the workshop are relevant to not only those who operate continuous plants but also to those who operate batch plants or purchase and process PETN (drying, screening, blending etc) and therefore the wider SAFEX membership.
Although required to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements prior to the workshop the majority of participants have agreed to share their presentations and these will appear in subsequent Newsletters and on the SAFEX website. The participants have also kindly agreed to answer any questions other members may have on their presentations on direct request.
Next steps
We believe this type of workshop on specific topics with selected participation of SAFEX members to be effective in achieving sharing of detailed safety related information that would be difficult in larger meetings such as Congress. We therefore encourage individual member companies to take the lead in organising future workshops in topics that they have a particular interest in such as emulsions, boosters, primary explosives, detonating cord, shock tube etc.
Inclusions
Two of the presentations are included to illustrate the high quality of the workshop: