Use of Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) within The Dow Chemical Company

摘要

Dow has been among the first in the chemical and petrochemical industries to use Layer of Protection Analysis as a standard risk assessment tool for our manufacturing facilities. Over the past few years, we 've expanded the use of this tool far beyond the original purpose of identifying safety instrumented system requirements. The implementation goal at Dow was to develop and implement a process that could be used effectively by a typical plant engineer to achieve consistent results without the need for in-depth involvement of risk assessment subject matter experts. Yet the tool had to be detailed enough to demonstrate safety system adequacy to internal business leaders and external regulatory agencies. LOPA is now used, in addition to our standard Process Hazard Analysis, to evaluate existing plants and new projects in order to assure that process hazards are adequately mitigated in addition to its more traditional use as a tool used to identify Safety Instrumented Systems. LOPA has now become one of the most used Process Safety tools in the company. This paper presents an overview of Dow' s use of LOPA as part of our overall Process Risk Management program, as well as an overview of a recent benchmarking study with representatives of other companies that use LOPA extensively.