CATEGORY: SAFETY
Chemical Engineering Transactions, Vol. 31, 2013
The
Influence of Maintenance on Some Selected Major Accidents
Peter Okoh, Stein Haugen
peter.okoh@ntnu.no
Department of Production and Quality Engineering, Norwegian University of
Science and Technology, Trondheim
Abstract
In spite of large and increasing efforts to control major accident risk, a
number of serious accidents over the last few years have shown that control
still is not sufficient in some cases. Examples of such accidents within the
chemical process and oil and gas industries are Flixborough Disaster, Bhopal
Disaster, Piper Alpha Disaster, Phillips 66 Disaster, Sodegaura Refinery Disaster,
DSM Chemical Plant Explosion, Stockline Plastics Factory Explosion and Texas
City Refinery Explosion. Investigations of the accidents have uncovered a
variety of causes and in recent years focus have tended to switch more and more
towards organizational and management issues.
In this paper, authors focus on how maintenance has influenced selected major
accidents. Safety barriers are installed to control the risk but this may fail
due to barrier vulnerability and/or deficiencies imposed by maintenance itself
or due to postponement of maintenance. Maintenance activities in themselves may
also trigger events which may develop into major accidents. Maintenance may
therefore influence accidents in many ways.
The
main objective of the paper is to discuss how maintenance has influenced some
major accidents in the oil and gas and chemical process industry. The paper
builds primarily on a thorough literature review, including review of earlier
literature on this topic and review of investigation reports from a selection
of accidents.
Free Full Text Source: http://www.aidic.it/lp2013/webpapers/247okoh.pdf
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