Chemical experts recommend promoting functional safety technology

Functional safety technologies widely used by large international companies have now been implemented in many petroleum and chemical companies in China. Li Yuming, a functional safety technology expert in China and a senior engineer at the Qingdao Safety Engineering Research Institute of Sinopec, said in an interview last week that China's functional safety research started late, and it is urgent to explore the promotion of functional safety in the process industry, especially in the high-risk chemical industry. Application, establish an implementation and evaluation system that meets national conditions and meets the requirements of standards.

Wang Haoshui, director of the Three Divisions of Supervision and Supervision of the State Administration of Work Safety, also pointed out at the National Conference on the Supervision of Dangerous Chemicals, not long ago: “Functional safety is a new discipline of safety engineering. It proposes a new concept and method for ensuring safety. However, at present, there are only a few large enterprises in China that are creating safety standardization level one-level standards, and most managers, technicians and field operators have a lack of understanding of functional safety technology, which requires us to widely publicize and speed up promotion. Make it more widely used."

According to Li Yuming, functional safety is an integral part of the overall safety of the process and an important part of process safety management. It is a major breakthrough in safety technology and management theory by controlling the overall risk of the safety system within the required objectives through appropriate technical and management measures. At present, the international security protection industry chain has been formed, including risk analysis, safety product production, safety product certification, safety system integration, and safety assessment.

Feng Xiaosheng, a senior engineer at the China Functional Safety Center, further explained: “Functional safety involves many fields, such as emergency shutdown systems for hazardous process devices in hazardous chemical production enterprises, fire protection systems, toxic gas detection systems, and emergency transportation in hazardous chemicals. Safeguard systems, etc. Whether these systems are functioning properly or safely, they need to be functionally and safely evaluated using functional safety standards. Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) Analysis, Safety Integrity Level (SIL) Assessment is international Two functional safety assessment methods are available."

Fortunately, both methods are currently used in large domestic enterprises. Cheng Xiande, manager of HSE Department of Fujian United Petrochemical Company, said last week: "In order to improve the functional safety of each system of the company's production equipment, in recent years, the company has trained a HAZOP team to carry out HAZOP analysis on the process and instrument systems of the equipment. The intrinsic safety level of the company. For example, when the over-pressure unit was overhauled not long ago, we used this analysis technique to find that the cock in the cavity of a newly installed bellows-type safety valve was not removed, thus avoiding the safety valve. Accidents caused by overpressure damage or even explosion of pressure vessels due to increased back pressure. At present, the company is strengthening the implementation of functional safety management, actively carrying out the establishment of safety production standardization first-class compliance enterprises, and strives to become a first-class enterprise for safety standardization of hazardous chemicals as soon as possible."

Huang Weilai, general manager of Xibaoyuan Chemical Technology Co., Ltd., specializing in safety analysis and diagnosis, said in an interview: "Since last year, the company has been involved in more than 160 projects in large enterprises such as Sinopec, PetroChina, CNOOC and Shenhua Group. SIL or HAZOP analysis was carried out, and the number of defects in the design, process or instrument that were investigated and eliminated by each project was more than 100. For example, the liquid level automatic monitoring alarm instrument and the chain instrument of a refining and chemical enterprise share a pressure pipe. Once the pressure pipe is blocked, the functions of the monitoring instrument and the interlocking instrument will not be realized. According to the advice of our company's experts, the company has set up two independent pressure piping lines, which improves the functional safety of the instrument system."

It is understood that many large chemical companies in the world have widely applied functional safety technology for safe production management. For example, not long ago, the delayed coking unit of a multinational petrochemical company was found to be in the SIL verification process, and the chain protection of the high-level interlocking system (SIS) of the delayed coking fractionation tower was found. When the high-level switch was started, the chain shut-off was liquid. The position control valve, the interlock valve and the control valve are the same actuator and will not meet the SIL level requirements. The evaluation company recommended the addition of an independent chain emergency shut-off valve to improve the SIS's grade and functional safety and reliability.

The application of functional safety in China's petroleum and chemical industry is still in its infancy, and the concepts of functional safety and safety integrity are still vague. How is the company's safety integrity level determined? How to effectively manage functional safety? A lot of relevant knowledge is still not popular enough, which is why some companies are often equipped with safety instrumented systems but often fail.

Experts such as Li Yuming suggested that on the one hand, safety practitioners must receive relevant knowledge training and clarify relevant concepts and concepts of functional safety. On the other hand, the government should organize basic research and demonstration to absorb and absorb the latest international standards of functional safety. Advanced technology, research on functional safety core technology, and in the typical chemical hazardous equipment and enterprise cultivation and pilot, gradually form a functional safety application and evaluation guide for domestic chemical production equipment safety instrumentation system.