Process Operations Safety: The What, Why, and How Behind Safe Petrochemical Plant Operations

Provides crucial lessons in process safety operations, drawing from 100 global case studies

Written from an operator’s perspective, Process Operations Safety provides valuable information and education on the fundamentals of process operations safety by providing background on process safety and key leading operational management and equipment failures that have led to catastrophic process safety incidents, including loss of life. Written by an expert with more than five decades of industry experience, this book enables readers to learn how simple jobs that they perform every day can lead to catastrophic safety incidents without proper caution, protocol, and attention.

A self-learning quiz is provided near each chapter’s end, with answers to all questions provided in the Appendix. A listing of additional resources or reference material, many with internet links, is also included at the end of each chapter.

Readers will find:

• Principles of process safety, properties of hydrocarbons, vapor cloud explosions (VCE), and boiling liquid expanding vapor explosions (BLEVE)
• Most frequent causes of significant process safety events in refining and petrochemical industries
• Causal factors in over 100 global case studies of operations and incidents, divided into thirty-five subchapters with several examples for each, explaining what happened and what could have happened
• Key lessons learned, written in simple terms using descriptions without jargon or complicated formulas

Process Operations Safety is an essential learning resource for petroleum refining and petrochemical plant operators, line supervisors, and critical support staff with field responsibility, such as process and mechanical engineers, along with advanced students at community and four-year colleges and technical/trade schools taking a process operations course.

M. Darryl Yoes is a practical experienced refinery supervisor and manager, having spent over fifty years in the refining industry. He is the founder and President of Safety Consulting International, LLC, the developer of this helpful guide to preventing process safety incidents. He is currently employed by EcoScience Resource Group, LLC in Baton Rouge, a firm specializing in developing process operations and environmental procedures for the refining and petrochemical industry.