A large Canadian Refinery is performing risk assessments to identify personnel, environmental, and operational hazards. This work is being done on a planned schedule with a different unit being reviewed annually. The challenge was to use Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) methodologies that provide an effective analysis appropriate to the unit to be studied and the potential hazards.
For the risk assessment of the refinery’s cooling water systems and acid gas/sulfur recovery systems, a top down fault tree analysis was used. The PHA of the HF Alkylation unit was done to meet the requirements of API RP-751. This required the use of the HAZOP methodology. The ioKinetic team used the hazard assessment documentation software PHAGlobal® from our partner ioMosaic Corporation to conduct the risk analysis. The method was followed by a consequence analysis of the identified high-risk release scenarios using SuperChems™ software, also from our partner ioMosaic Corporation. For other refinery units such as the Crude Tower, Hydrocracker, and BTX unit, a combination of the HAZOP and What-if/Checklist methodology was utilized.
ioKinetic was able to tailor the PHA approach to the specific unit being reviewed and met the refinery’s risk assessment goals at minimum cost to the refinery. These risk assessments reports allow the refinery to easily revalidate the risk assessments in the future.