Projects

Safety & Compliance

Guaranteed safety for Ducor

Situation

Ducor Petrochemicals produces 180 million kilos of polypropylene granulate in the Botlek area of Rotterdam. Every day, around 100 employees are busy making granulate that finds its application in various applications, such as car parts, electrical appliances, textiles, packaging materials and numerous household products. The company wants to further improve safety in a structured and controlled way in order to demonstrably comply with relevant laws and regulations.

Solution

Ducor called upon the HSSE Engineering department of KH Engineering to carry out safety studies and to advise on setting up the Safety Management System with regard to instrumental safety. Experts within this department acted as chairmen for the execution of safety studies and ensured a structured HAZOP review process. By constructively challenging and coaching the employees of Ducor, a thorough HAZOP study was produced. Using the SIL (Safety Integrity Level) system, Ducor made a better classification for the reliability of many safety instruments, under guidance from KH Engineering. Ducor also wanted to bring the management of instrumental safety devices in line with international standards for the Safety Management System. KH Engineering performed a gap analysis and proposed improvements to be implemented in the Safety Management System. Parallel to this, a verification of the instrumental safety systems against the as-built situation was carried out.

Client benefits

The TÜV-certified functional safety engineers employed by KH Engineering determined the required SIL classes of instrumental safety systems. Based on this information, they can draw up a Safety Requirements Specification containing the design principles for the safety loop and test the chosen design against these.

Ducor’s in-house knowledge of Safety Management Systems of Brzo companies made it possible to integrate the requirements from the international standards for the management of instrumental safety systems into the Ducor management system in a simple and straightforward manner. This approach enables Ducor to benefit from a good starting position for the intended transition to a new integrated safety PLC.

KH Engineering’s activities

KH Engineering performed the following activities for this project:

– Chairing of HAZOP and SIL classification studies
– Training on HAZOP and SIL methodology
– Checking the as built situation of instrumental safety devices
– Performing a gap analysis with respect to the requirements of the standard
– Advising on the SMS
– Advice on demand

Projectleader: Robert Boom

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