Knowledge Center: Plant Safety

It has been slow, but certainly steady and sure. Industries the world over are realising the imperativeness of ensuring process safety. It may have taken a few charred bodies, however, to enhance the awareness. But then, that is how development has come about – triggered by exigencies, mishaps and catastrophes, some unexpected, and some just inevitable consequences of human carelessness.

Whatever the triggers may have been, process safety systems suppliers are having a field decade, so to say. No fears of any downturns exist till the end of this decade, when one considers a global market open to all players in this sector.

Shop-floor accidents and mine-site mishaps have not yet become things of the past. Coal mine casualties in the recent past in the US, India and China, and the British Petroleum (BP) explosion in Texas in 2005 are incidents which stand out fresh in the mind’s eye.

Fossil fuels, while being drivers of economies around the world, have also been “poisoning” mankind as sources of the main agents of global warming greenhouse gases and snatching away lives of human beings, birds and animals alike when spilled for instance or allowed to ignite and explode (due to human carelessness or sometimes even despite the exercising of the greatest possible care).

It has been, in recent times, a classical case of how one thing leads to another. Rapid economic and population growth in India and China for instance, has stimulated a demand for fuels and energy. In the absence of enough capacity to exploit renewable energy resources, the onus of meeting this demand has fallen on fossil fuels. This has triggered several greenfield and brownfield projects in the oil and gas sector in countries around the world which have been eager to benefit from the development of two big markets in Asia. With new process industries being set up and many more on the anvil, and also with safety, quality and environmental regulations for these being beefed up by the year, process safety instrumented systems and services providers, and also the components manufacturers have cashed in on the opportunities. This virtuous cycle has wonderfully blended together the need for increasing welfare in society and a rise in the standard of living with of fulfilling this need in a safe and environmentally-friendly way.

Billions of dollars Asish Ghosh, Vice President of ARC Advisory Group, has predicted a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of 10 percent for the process safety systems market, meaning that by the end of this decade, the market would be worth about US$1.5 billion.

“Rough estimates of safety related I/O, in the oil and gas sector instance, of the total I/O’s in a project, would be something like 15-20 per cent for refining, 50 per cent for the upstream and about 30 per cent for LNG,” said Ghosh when quizzed by Control Engineering Asia.

He singles out the Asian giants – India and China – as being the main drivers of this market, while pointing out that the North American market will decline slightly. It is likely that the players there will try to keep themselves in the black by updating old installations and providing existing clients with new safety systems with added functionalities.

But then, if incidents like the 2005 one at the BP refinery in Texas keep happening sporadically in different process sectors, there would be pressure on these industries to overhaul their process safety systems (or perhaps risk losing their licenses to operate), which would open up a sea of opportunities for the players who may also have started seeking overseas clients (in the Latin American markets for instance) in order to make up for a possibly sagging bottom line.

It is the world market which beckons one and all these days, more than the respective domestic markets. Globalization is bringing unprecedented challenges in the wake of conspicuous benefits, but it has certainly widened the range of possibilities for survival and success in the business arena.

One process safety expert based in Singapore concurs with Ghosh that the DCS market in Asia has become a veritable magnet for process safety systems suppliers, and points out the change in attitude that has come about in the developing world towards process safety – from indifference to growing interest. This change of attitude has acted as a stimulus for new products to be introduced into the market.

Power demandsWhile the oil and gas sector has been pointed out by many respondents as being a key demand driver for integrated process safety systems, the power sector will also generate some demand in the years to come. In this backdrop, it is noteworthy that nuclear utilities are decreasing safety-related investments, and so-called passively safe reactors have many safety systems replaced by natural processes like gravity fed emergency cooling water and air cooling.

It is surprising that the 1957 catastrophe at Windscale, the 1979 Three Mile Island disaster, the 1986 Chernobyl accident and the 1999 Tokaimura (fuel rods fabricating facility) mishap, have failed to be effective “history lessons”. It is also true that most nuclear reactors in operation these days are 20-or-more years old, and efforts are being made to impart longevity to them.

Do these efforts include investing in enhanced process safety systems? Ideally, they should. If they do, considering that many developing countries (India, Indonesia, Egypt, China etc) are keen on upgrading their nuclear energy capabilities for civilian purposes, new contracts for safety systems are likely to be signed.

Beyond systems A strong leadership culture to drive process safety practices in the industry is a necessary accompaniment to investments in automated safety systems in the workplace. There certainly is no “mechanical or electronic substitute” for a strong safety culture imbibed and religiously practiced by one and all in the workplace under a motivating leader.

There have also been calls to extend the Kaizen approach beyond quality and productivity to process safety. In other words, improvements in safety should be continuous and progressive, and certainly not static and awaiting accidents to trigger incremental improvements, and also preferably not stepped.

Adhering to IEC standards and introducing the state-of-the-art software and hardware into the safety system is just one part of the solution. If one can recall what happened at British Petroleum refinery in Texas in 2005, process safety culture needs to encompass the entire organization – top-down to begin with but pervasive eventually.

For more information Please visit Honeywell website at www.honeywell.com/ps/sea