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Parent Category: Safety Info Posts

Category: Chemical Process Safety (PSM/RMP)

Published: 21 November 2013

The recent CSB report involving a catastrophic failure of a pressure vessel is causing quite a stir among engineering, safety, and process safety circles. I have received several e-mails and a couple of phone calls claiming the CSB incident is "very rare" and that the vast majority of pressure vessels are managed properly. Much like their criticism of me for stating things "you have no proof of", I ask them to provide me the data to demonstrate their statement that the "vast number of pressure vessels are managed properly". They always go back to the LACK OF ACCIDENTS as their proof. I don't think I need to point out to the safety community the flaws in using the "lack of accidents" as a very poor indicator of safety performance. Fact of the matter is, no one really knows the "failure rate" of PV's as no one knows the number of PVs in use on the globe or even in the USA. No one has a definitive number of how many are actually in service, how many failed, etc. But we can look back at previous incidents (excluding fired pressure vessels such as boilers) and see that pressure vessel management is not what most think it is! Just a quick look at CSB accidents and we find another incident involving a pressure vessel that was IMPROPERLY welded on, weakening the vessel. As with most accidents, there were multiple failures involved. In this 2003 accident CSB found that the facility had no documentation on this vessel or ones similar to it. No 1UA sheets, no name plates, no operation history, no inspections, etc. One highlight of this report is:

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