Quantitative Risk Assessments (QRAs) provide an objective, quantifiable analysis of the potential risk exposure to personnel, as well as assets, market, and ecological and environmental impact. It is a powerful tool when combined with the right professional guidance; a detailed QRA can guide you through the unknown, demonstrating individual and societal risk results and allowing for an informed decision-making process. The BakerRisk team leverages years of research and development expertise and mitigation solution implementation to provide reputable and well-supported risk results that help clients easily identify sources and locations with the highest potential risk to both their facilities and personnel. BakerRisk takes your safety seriously and has invested our research, time, and money to make sure we understand the “building blocks” to keep you and your assets safe.
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QRA Process
The goal of any analysis is not only to help you comply with regulations, but also to provide the information necessary to assist with making informed and effective risk mitigation decisions. We are here to help. Our quantitative risk assessment process uses a data-intensive approach to remove the guesswork in identifying maximum credible events. The typical process includes analyses in a few key areas:
With our cutting-edge software tools SafeSite3G© and QRATool©, our professionals can model a range of potential unique outcomes, ranging from a few for small units to millions for large-scale facilities. This ensures that potential significant fire, explosion, and toxic hazards at your facility are thoroughly identified and assessed.
QRA Process
We document each quantitative risk assessment in a comprehensive report that defines inputs, explains calculation methods, provides interim calculation results, and summarizes them in a range of meaningful measures which allows them to be reviewed/interrogated in detail. Our QRA approach provides and presents results (onsite/offsite) in terms of frequency exceedance curves and contours, societal risk, and individual risk to provide a comprehensive picture of the risk profile and can be compared to internal corporate standards or when applicable, governmental criteria. Societal risk results are presented in tables showing sources contributing the greatest risk and locations that are predicted to incur the greatest risk at the facility. Risk results tables also identify the contribution of risk by explosion, fire, and toxic hazards so that they can be easily used to identify potential risk refinement and mitigation strategies, and to make informed and effective mitigation decisions, as necessary.
QRA Videos
QRATool© allows us to combine initiating event frequencies, ignition probabilities, weather distribution probabilities, and occupancy data with explosion, fire, and toxic vulnerabilities from simulated releases to conduct precise and efficient risk assessments. Our consultants utilize QRATool© to evaluate and prioritize risk drivers, streamlining the evaluation of mitigation strategies to reduce identified risks to tolerable levels. When combined with our rigorous quantitative risk assessment methodology, this approach empowers our teams to accurately determine the process risks affecting personnel within a facility and/or the public. QRATool© efficiently supports study updates and revalidations to allow project teams and organizations to quickly understand existing and future impacts of proposed changes to facilities, as well as effectively supports the front-end loading (FEL) design stages of capital projects.
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Related Resources
This paper will cover another aspect of hydrogen safety, from the perspective of consequence modeling and risk management.
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Component failure rate data are used in a variety of quantitative and semi-quantitative study methods related to process safety and reliability, including Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA), and Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA). In each of these methodologies, failure rate data are used to determine the probability that specific protective components, such as pressure relief devices, will fail to function as designed when called upon to prevent an incident. In the case of pressure relief devices, standardized probabilities of failure on demand are often applied with minimal consideration of the device type or the process service in which the device is employed. This paper will examine pressure relief device failure rate data from multiple published sources, categorize the data based on device type and service, and then develop guidelines for determining probability of device failure on demand based on the proposed device type and service categories. Additionally, this paper will provide commentary on the administrative aspects of relief device handling relative to observed relief valve reliability.
BakerRisk is pleased for the opportunity to participate at the Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Symposium (MKOPSS) 2020 Virtual Conference.
It is crucial for Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) teams to be aware that the mere presence of a pressure relief device does not necessarily constitute a valid safeguard against all overpressure scenarios for the protected system. This paper will present the following ten most important questions for a PHA team to ask when considering pressure relief systems as safeguards.
One could be forgiven for being confused over what is meant by “facility siting.” The term was originally used to refer to the process by which a company decided where to locate a new operation (the city, state, etc.) and the evaluation was largely focused on the availability of workers, utilities, and other infrastructure in the area. There have been two editions of the AIChE/CCPS book “Guidelines for Facility Siting and Layout”1 (renamed for the second edition) that discuss site selection and arrangement of equipment and buildings within the site. In addition to industry available guidance documents, many companies have also established internal guidance documents for facility siting to ensure assets are reviewed in a consistent manner.
Facilities that handle hazardous materials above threshold quantities are required to assess the impacts due to postulated accidents involving releases of these materials, and to ensure that people are adequately protected from the associated fire, explosion, and toxic hazards. An analysis of these hazards can be based solely on consequences from maximum credible events or can incorporate the likelihood of the events to characterize results in terms of risk. The methods of performing these analyses may vary, but, regardless of the specific techniques used, fundamental principles of thoroughness and defensibility should be achieved. This paper describes best practices and basic requirements for consequence-based and risk-based facility siting studies (FSSs), also commonly referred to as quantitative risk analyses (QRAs), consistent with industry guidance. The fundamental objective of a consequence-based or risk-based FSS is to ensure that the consequences or risks posed by facility operations are minimized to the extent practical.
Facility siting methods to optimize the layout of industrial facilities for risk reduction have been evolving for decades from subjective views, standards, and guidelines to quantitative numerical analysis. The authors of this paper have tossed out the past, moved beyond the present, and taken out their crystal balls to provide a discussion around the future of facility siting by focusing on technology driven enhancements associated with three main themes: mainstreaming of current advanced analysis techniques into the base case methodology, incorporating company and/or site specific data trending and analytics to operationalize the studies, and the potential transformational change to machine learning-based predictive risk management. With technological advancements touching nearly every area of business, it is no surprise that it is also changing the landscape of consequence and risk-based facility siting approaches. As with all markets, the customers will be a key driver for the advancements of technical safety studies to suit their adapting needs. However, as this article will show, personnel conducting facility siting studies are also using technological advancements to challenge the status quo by improving data fidelity, increasing the robustness and depth of analysis, and providing improved insights to aid decision making.
Facility siting mitigation decisions should be made in a logical and defensible manner. This article provides a framework for making and justifying facility siting mitigation decisions beginning with presenting risk results in a clear manner prior to identifying practical risk mitigation strategies, highlighting potential source and location risk mitigation strategies, demonstrating how these strategies can be evaluated with examples, and ultimately to quantifying and optimizing the safety-benefit of each mitigation strategy / combination of strategies. The outcome of this process provides a defensible basis for prioritization and practicality of risk mitigation strategies, or a combination of strategies that reduce facility risk to broadly acceptable levels or as low as reasonably practicable while minimizing expense.
It’s a common question and one that we usually ask lightly, but when we consider safety, it’s important for it to be asked because we need to consider what can go wrong in order to make things safe. So, what do we think about when we seek to answer that question? In 2014, I wrote an article for this publication about technical risk assessments in terms of math and numbers, which is fine for risk assessments done on a corporate or systematic level with data and analysts and the time to study the issue, but how does this apply to individuals on the floor, dealing with the hazards of daily operations? Sometimes, we just do not have the time or information to do all the logic and math, and yet we still make decisions that affect safety.
Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) is an extremely powerful tool to help one objectively assess the risk of complex processes. Most processes that use Highly Toxic Materials (HTMs) are complicated and pose hazards both to the employees on site and, in many cases, to the neighbouring offsite community. Understanding the risk associated with these HTM processes is often complicated due to the many risk mitigation systems that may be employed by the operator to control the hazards. Companies often conduct QRA studies to evaluate the potential risk exposures to their employees and neighbouring communities and, in some cases, to satisfy regulatory requirements. Regulatory bodies increasingly scrutinise QRA studies as part of their determination on the tolerability of risk posed by facilities processing HTMs.
In collecting background material for the recent CCPS book “Guidelines for Determining the Probability of Ignition of a Released Flammable Mass”, the wide variability of experiences, opinion and data on the topic of ignition probabilities of hydrogen releases was striking. This discord was apparent even for pure hydrogen; one can only imagine the complexities involved with ignitions of mixtures of hydrogen with hydrotreating feedstock, or ignitions of hydrogen-containing synthesis gas streams. This paper discusses the literature on the subject, including experiments that suggest why people might reasonably have these vastly different views on the subject. Given that the range of opinions for a given situation commonly range from 1% to 100% probability of ignition, getting a better understanding of the phenomena is critical to providing better guidance for a variety of risk analyses such as Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) and Layers of Protection Analysis (LOPA).
Almost since the beginning of time, and certainly since the beginning of structured risk analyses, a core question in studies involving flammable releases has been, “Will the release ignite?” Technology has been developed to predict consequences of ignition with varing degrees of precision. However, the “Will it actually ignite” question has received much less attention and technical development. We know that when a flammable material is released from process equipment, the result may be a fire, an explosion, or the release may simply dissipate with no apparent effect other than a minor environmental impact. Depending on the circumstances, the probability (likelihood) of ignition can range from 0 to 1. Most of the current methods used for estimating the likelihood of ignition are rather crude, and in many or most cases are not based on actual process industry data. For anyone performing a risk-based analysis of any type (QRAs, LOPAs, risk-based facility siting studies, or even the application of a PHA risk matrix), this results in overly conservative or overly optimistic expectations of ignition. In other words, the current methods are often not much better than a guess and can be misleading, with potentially catastrophic results.
The management of risk is essential for companies to ensure long-term sustainable growth and profit performance. History is full of examples in the chemical process industry that clearly show the consequences of not properly managing risk. Some incidents like BP Texas City, Bhopal, Flixborough and Piper Alpha have affected not only the company, but the entire industry. Effective risk management processes balance the desire for risk minimization with the business need for profits. The authors, having worked with several companies, will describe an approach utilized to develop more robust risk management processes. The approach involves identifying attributes that the desired process should have, clarifying risk management goals, reviewing the existing process, identifying gaps, and implementing solutions to close the gaps. The resulting process has been repeatedly shown to gain broad acceptance throughout the organization, thus achieving long-term risk management performance goals. A case study of a U.S. company that was struggling with consistent risk management application at their facilities due to significant expansion is also presented to illustrate how the approach is utilized. The authors worked with this company over a 2½-year period to review and modify the way risk is managed within the organization. The resulting dynamic risk management process allowed them to prioritize their resources in an efficient, consistent and transparent/auditable manner.
There are several factors that make the establishment of Risk Criteria a daunting task that few want to undertake. For large global corporations, it is likely that one or more facilities have to meet governmental requirements. For U.S. facilities, there is now also an incentive to having risk criteria in that it allows greater flexibility in complying with the updated API Recommended Practice 752 on siting of occupied permanent buildings, which for the first time now allows risk-based safety management strategies. Having corporate risk criteria is imperative to ensure that facilities and operations that are not in “regulated jurisdictions” have a consistent framework to make risk related decisions. Risk Criteria range from the use of the traditional risk matrix (consequence vs. likelihood) to the more quantitative risk criteria that include Geographic risk (individual risk) and/or Societal risk criteria. This paper discusses the steps necessary to help companies develop robust defendable risk criteria that facilitate decision making.
Most decisions faced by owners and operators of facilities in the chemical, oil and gas industries are difficult and complex. Some of the most challenging decisions involve EHS risk issues which often require tradeoffs and involve emotional issues surrounding personnel safety or protection of environment.
In the nitrogen fertilizer industry, potentially severe impacts can stem from toxic, fire and explosion hazards from accidental releases and hazards associated with failures in high pressure equipment. While consequence analysis can be used to calculate the severity (as measured by the personnel or buildings in the hazard zone), the very large zones associated with some of the most severe scenarios essentially place the entire facility within the hazard zone, leaving few practical options to mitigate the consequence. Using a Quantitative Risk Analysis (QRA) approach, which evaluates both the consequence and likelihood of potential events at fertilizer sites, provides additional insight to help make informed decisions about the best way to minimize the risk exposure.
Thermal hazard evaluation of process buildings is becoming an important component of standard site hazard evaluations and facility siting studies, especially with the release of the new API RP-752 [1]. The new API RP-752 recommends that process facilities analyze thermal hazards to onsite buildings and assess its impact on structures and building occupants. Thermal loads on process and portable buildings produced by fires from process units and equipment can be significant, especially if the building is close to the fire source. Buildings designed to mitigate blast and toxic hazards can be placed closer to process equipment and unit boundaries, but could be exposed to thermal hazards from a potential fire in these units. Screening thermal models typically used in process safety (PS) applications cannot take into account detailed building geometries and how they affect thermal impact from fire on building occupants. The more robust Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) techniques were used in this study to assess thermal hazards from horizontal jet fires on a portable (target) building located downstream of the fire source. Jet fires were simulated and thermal radiation loads on the building were predicted using PHOENICS. ADINA was then used to estimate the thermal impact from these fires on the building occupants. Temperature rise inside the building due to the thermal loads at the building exterior surface were calculated. The results showed that thermal impact on the building decreases as the distance between the building and fire source increases. Furthermore, the results indicate that buildings can provide protection to occupants depending on exposure time, building design and insulation applied at the building walls. The results clearly show that a detailed CFD analysis can be effectively used to simulate jet fires, assess their thermal impact on buildings and help facilities comply with regulations and recommendations such as the new API RP-752.
When a flammable material is released from process equipment, the result may be a fire, an explosion, or the release may simply dissipate with no apparent effect other than a minor environmental impact. Depending on the circumstances, the probability of ignition can range from 0 to 1. For anyone performing a risk-based analysis of any type (QRAs, LOPAs, risk-based facility siting studies, or even application of a PHA risk matrix) two things are of importance: the probability the event will occur and the likely consequences if it does. Of the two, consequences have been the subject of much more extensive development work. Likelihood, however, is an equally critical input that requires objective evaluation and, to date, has had less technologically sound approaches developed and accepted in the user community. The result is that most of the methods for estimating the likelihood of ignition are rather crude, and in many or most cases not based on process industry data.
A project was performed for the Explosion Research Cooperative to develop algorithms for predicting the frequencies of explosions based on a variety of design, operating and environmental conditions. Algorithms were developed for estimating unit-based explosion frequencies, such as those reported in API Recommended Practice 752, but in more detail and covering a much broader range of chemical process types. The project also developed methods for predicting scenario-based explosion frequencies, using frequencies of initiating events and conditional probabilities of immediate ignition and delayed ignition resulting in explosion. The algorithms were based on a combination of published data and expert opinion.
Risk exposures often involve potential economic issues that can result in “business interruption” from damage to critical assets or public pressure that can alter or shut down an operation. Strong emotions from stakeholders further complicate risk exposures that involve safety impacts affecting a company’s employees and contractors, as well as the general public. Furthermore, risk exposures that have high-impact potential (catastrophic) create another layer of complexity as some stakeholders’ lose sight of the frequency side of the risk equation. Management teams are forced to toe a fine line in order to balance the needs of the various stakeholders and economically operate their facilities.
It has been 5 or 10 years since industry conducted its initial facility siting analyses. It could be time to revisit those studies, if not because the facility has changed, then because there might be room for improvement on the first efforts. Many of the initial studies focused primarily on explosion impacts. The results may or may not have been phrased in terms of risk. The recommendations were likely difficult to integrate with other plant improvement projects. And now resources for such an analysis are even tighter than they were then. This paper will utilize a facility siting case study to highlight analysis improvements including inclusion of explosion, fire, and toxic risks, consideration of toxic ingress into buildings, phrasing results of all scenarios in risk terminology, and presenting results and recommendations in the language of a company's risk management process. The method used is efficient and provides meaningful results that are easily translated into actions.
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