Four questions of process safety control for the h

Four questions on process safety control of industrial safety

in recent years, China's attention to safety production has continued to rise. There are many kinds of products, such as detachable surgical suture, drug relief packaging agent, artificial fracture internal fixation materials, which are widely used in process control in petrochemical and other fields, but also face safety problems. Although process safety control has been developed for decades, how to implement safety control reasonably and effectively is still a problem worth studying and discussing for the majority of users. This article captures some views of industry experts and technical representatives, hoping to bring enlightenment to you

guest:

Wang Lifeng, senior engineer of Sinopec Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Co., Ltd.

Li Yulin, process control department of Honeywell (China) Co., Ltd.

Zeng shuowei, manager of Control System Department of ABB (China) Co., Ltd.

what requirements should process safety control meet

speaking of the requirements of process safety control, Zeng shuowei, manager of the control system Department of ABB (China) Co., Ltd., believes that the international functional safety standards IEC61508 and IEC61511 are good references, which set a global benchmark for the "good practice" of functional safety. He said that these two standards emphasize that functional safety should be considered and implemented from the perspective of the whole functional safety life cycle, involving all institutions engaged in functional safety, not just limited to safety system suppliers. IEC61508 is a general functional safety standard, and the development of modern functional safety control products needs to meet its requirements. IEC61511 focuses more on the requirements of process industrial engineering implementation. It can be seen that process safety control should include all-round content from system to instrument, to engineering implementation, consulting service, operation machine maintenance, etc., forming a comprehensive and perfect mechanism

according to manager Zeng, abb has been continuously developing and improving such a comprehensive process safety mechanism since it first implemented the safety control system on the European North Sea oil and gas platform in 1979. So far, abb can not only provide t ü V certified 800xA high integrity safety control system and various types of recent safety instrument products, but also has eight t ü V certified safety execution centers around the world to provide professional engineering services to users; In addition, abb also provides consulting services covering the whole safety life cycle, such as HAZOP (hazard and operability analysis), SIL level determination, alarm management, etc., which truly provides end-to-end support from the perspective of safety life cycle

Li Yulin, a safety system expert from Honeywell process control department, believes that Honeywell's commitment to the safety of plant operation has been extended far beyond the limits of traditional safety systems. These solutions integrate transmitters and safety valves assessed by safety integrity level (SIL), allowing the use of overall control and safety solutions, combined with comprehensive on-site equipment diagnosis, so as to improve on-site asset management and improve plant maintenance and operational performance. In addition, the safety life cycle management service provided by Honeywell can complement the system solution. These services include hazard and risk level analysis, safety integrity level verification and verification research, document certification of safety system technical requirements, safety instrument system (SIS) certification testing, maintenance services, and parts management projects

Huang Buyu, deputy chief engineer of Sinopec engineering and construction company, focused on the petrochemical industry and emphasized that the safety concept should run through the whole process of safety instruments and control systems. He pointed out that the implementation of process safety control should also take full account of reliability, availability and maintainability. Only when the safety system takes these requirements into account can it be practical

dcs and SIS towards integration

Professor Wang Lifeng of Sinopec Beijing Yanshan Petrochemical Co., Ltd. pointed out that in the past, the main reason why the plant control system DCS and safety instrument system SIS were designed and implemented respectively was that the reliability of the control system was not enough to ensure the reliability of the safety system at that time. Due to the development of DCS technology in recent ten years, its reliability has been greatly improved, the cost has been reduced, and the robustness of the system has reached the level equivalent to that of SIS system. Therefore, users have less and less concerns about this aspect, and more users have accepted the integration of the two

manager Zeng also said that although the integration of the two has shown an obvious trend at present, the implementation level of integration by different manufacturers is still different. For example, for some relatively simple integration, the two control systems are separated, and the human-machine interface is integrated; ABB can use the same control network and controller hardware in the same framework system structure, and there are only differences in firmware. It can even put the process control and safety applications in the same controller. With the built-in firewall mechanism, the interference between process control and safety loop applications can be eliminated

according to the introduction of Honeywell's enhanced version of Experion? Process knowledge system (PKS) also integrates its unique safety instrument system (SIS). The simulation function embedded in Experion can be used for comprehensive operator training and control, display and program step certification to help improve the operation effect of the equipment. Not only that, the system also integrates the batch processing function, which can help chemical and life science related enterprises greatly improve the output and production reliability

it is reported that by integrating with Honeywell's latest safety manager platform, Experion uses the same display to directly provide operators with important safety information and fire and gas information, such as the alarm before the system stops. Using Experion, operators can obtain SIS point data, diagnosis and system information, as well as alarm and event, operator display and event sequence information in the whole plant. This reduces the number of field sensor equipment installations, thereby reducing the overall system cost and maintenance cost

how to deal with personnel factors in process safety control

all kinds of system products are inseparable from the operation and use of personnel, so even if the software and hardware products such as control systems and safety instruments provided by manufacturers are reliable, the importance of operators cannot be ignored. Chen Jiansheng, Secretary of the Pingdingshan Municipal Party committee of Yanshan Petrochemical, expressed concern about whether the local economic growth can be maintained after the capacity is removed. Wang Lifeng, senior engineer, pointed out that operators are an important part of the process safety system. If the maintenance, operation or modification operations on the safety instrument system are not handled properly, it will also lead to serious consequences, resulting in shutdown or huge economic losses. So how to deal with the personnel factor in process safety control

manager Zeng of ABB said that as a system supplier, abb not only provides first-class hardware and software products and a systematic functional safety management system, but also can help users improve the factors of operators through a variety of ways. For example, through ergonomics, improve the operation environment, and design the operation interface more reasonably, which is more in line with the habits of human operation; Or optimize and improve the alarm management; ABB can also help customers design a set of standardized operation processes according to their specific characteristics, so as to improve the efficiency of operation and reduce the potential safety hazards caused by personnel factors

manager Li of Honeywell said that in the aspect of operators, Honeywell made full use of the functions of UniSIM simulation tool integrated by Experion to carry out simulation training for operators before the system went online. In this way, operators can be familiar with the operation process and process conditions in advance, so as to reduce errors in the actual operation process and improve reliability. The comprehensive simulation function of Experion can significantly improve the engineering efficiency by simulating the test control strategy, display and process steps. In this regard, another important function provided by Experion is the unique alarm suspension function, which enables operators to better manage and prioritize alarms, and improve the efficiency of operators in abnormal situations that may lead to process chaos

where will process safety control go

the future development trend of process safety control has been the common concern of manufacturers and industry users. We also see that the trend is actually influenced by both suppliers and users

on this topic, Zeng shuowei, manager of the control system Department of ABB (China) Co., Ltd., believes that from the perspective of products and technology, the integration of process control and safety has shown a significant trend and will become more and more obvious in the future. Of course, due to the technical differences among manufacturers and the differences in users' ideas, the degree of integration will still be discussed

manager Zeng believes that another trend of process safety control is that users will tend to reduce the cost of process safety control through refined demonstration and optimization design. He pointed out that in order to maintain the safety system at a certain SIL level, it is often necessary to carry out regular inspection and testing according to the relevant functional safety specifications, which incurs considerable costs, and the higher the SIL level, the greater the maintenance cost. In the past, users often over designed the process safety system, such as using too many unnecessary high SIL level loops, resulting in a lot of costs. In the future, the number of high-level circuits can be reduced as much as possible through optimized design on the basis of ensuring safety. At the same time, the interval of inspection and test can be extended as much as possible by using PST (partial stroke test) and other ways to reduce costs

manager Li of Honeywell summarized the scope of safety control. He believes that process security control will increasingly emphasize both physical security and information security; At the same time, the future integrated security solutions will cover a wider range of areas of the factory. Under this opportunity, wireless monitoring and control technology will therefore receive more attention. (end)