New eLearning module available

By Dr Martin Held

At the 2023 SAFEX congress, Maria Virginia Ramirez (‘Marivi’) gave a presentation with the title ‘Emanation of Nitrous Gasses in the Nitration Process’ at ENAEX Rio Loa plant in Chile. The paper discussed the immediate and root causes and inconsistencies in the emergency procedures very openly.

As reported in the May 2023 SAFEX Newsletter, the idea was born that this incident – which has multiple Management of Change (MOC) components in it – would be an ideal candidate for the next SAFEX eLearning module.

With permission of Enaex to use the incident report and supporting investigation findings, a new eLearning module with the title "Why we need to do Periodic Hazard Studies on existing plants" has been developed and now been launched on the SAFEX website. This incident and its learnings are a good example of how periodic safety assessments such as PHS (Periodic Hazard Studies) can help identify and correct potential safety gaps in process design or of process conditions. This is especially true for older plants which may never have been subject to such a detailed assessment, or which may have been modified at some time in the forgotten past. There are several reported incidents in the explosive industry where lack of PHS has been identified as a root cause. This will thus be very relevant to many SAFEX members.