Flanges, their bolts, their gaskets, and their TORQUE
WOW, just wow, CF Industries has produced a world-class video from an incident they had back in 2015. You're in a class on your own when you publically take an incident and turn it into a learning for others to benefit from. The incident involved a failure of a high-pressure flange on a hydrogen process. What they found in their investigation can be found in just about any chemical process around the world that has flanges. This 6-minute video rolls out their learnings and their improvements on how they manage their flanges. As I have discussed here many times, TORQUING is KEY to process safety, and you will hear first hand of how this facility learned the hard way that just because it has been done that way for years without an incident does not mean it is SAFE! The old practice of tightening until it stops is NOT the way to manage flange integrity. We have to recognize that flanges, although necessary in our process(s), pose a significant leak point when they are NOT managed properly - and unfortunately there are a lot of processes not managing their flanges properly. CF Industries does an excellent job of explaining their mistakes, their improvements, and how they now manage their flanges today. PLEASE notice the implementation of a "permitting process" to place the flange back into service!!! I love permit-to-work processes, but in my experience, we utilized our work-order management system, Linebreak/Process Opening Permit, AND our LOTO permit process to manage this return to service. The CF Industries form you will see in the video was an "MI procedure" in my plants; however it best fits into your facility, managing flange integrity is an ABSOLUTE must for process safety! Well done CF Industries. |
Partner Organizations I am proud to announce that The Chlorine Institute and SAFTENG have extended our"Partners in Safety" agreement for another year (2024) CI Members, send me an e-mail to request your FREE SAFTENG membership
Member Associations
|
