Predicting Process Risks for Improved Safety and Operational Excellence: A Breakthrough Technology and Case Studies

摘要

Most of the incidents and unexpected process failures can be avoided if the operating team gets timely information about developing risks and takes preventative action. While advances have been made in process risk management in the past few years, in practice, there still remain significant information gaps that prevent facilities from practicing proactive process risk management. Asean Bintulu Fertilizer (ABF), a subsidiary of PETRONAS, produces 700kMt (772,000 short tons) of Urea annually. Due to the nature of materials involved and interdependency between its operating units, minimizing process safety and reliability risks is the highest priority for ABF's operating team. Although ABF is equipped with the latest tools in process monitoring, these tools have their limitations, particularly, lacking predictive risk capabilities. The use of a new software, Dynamic Risk Analyzer™ (DRA™), based on proprietary predictive risk analysis, is outlined in this paper. DRA allows the operating team to assess the risk level of its plant operations and identify early indicators of developing process risks daily. The result - processes are operated with reduced risk profiles and improved capital effectiveness. ABF adopted the DRA system at their facility in December 2014. Since then, ABF has improved its organizational culture and workflow that involve day-to-day proactive assessment of process risks at their early stages. Real-life operations issues that were detected and addressed early on are discussed.