Safety Aspects of Process Transfer

摘要

In the last decade, focussing on core competences and striving for regional or worldwide leadership in these areas has brought about significant acceleration of organisational changes in the process industry. Announcements of mergers and demergers appear regularly in the media and numerous small and medium sized producers have appeared in the market, filling niches vacated by the focusing process of the big players. At the same time, new markets have emerged and new production facilities have been erected: for example, the last decade has seen the start-up of many new chemical production sites in the People's Republic of China which are either operated by European Companies or are joint ventures with European partners. At the technical level, this dynamism involves an increased transfer of know-how on processes, and as safety is an integral part of each process, this raises the question of how to manage process transfers in such a way as to fulfil the increased demands whilst simultaneously ensuring safety. Batch-processes, being typical of specialty chemical production, are particularly suitable for allowing process to be transferred in a short space of time, as they are usually carried out in highly flexible multi-purpose plants. This, on the other hand, presents a particular challenge for the respective safety management systems.