Safety is consistently among the highest priorities for manufacturers and producers. Critical goals are to avoid safety incidents, keep site personnel safe, protect the community around you, protect the environment as a whole, and improve your corporate financial health. A robust safety culture has many facets, including occupational safety, containment safety, process safety, and functional safety.
IEC 61508
Extending Final Element Proof Testing Intervals
I received a question from a very old post here on the blog, Credit for Partial Stroke Tests in Verification Process. The person was trying to get a better understanding about this chart showing how partial stroke tests (PSTs) can extend the intervals between full stroke tests for final elements in a safety instrumented function (SIF).
Integrated versus Separate Control and Safety
Panelists at a session at the 2019 ARC Industry Forum, Safety Systems: Integrated versus Not? Does It Really Matter?, set out to discuss the pros and cons of the approaches and how they accommodate different risk factors. ARC Advisory Group's Mark Sen Gupta moderated...
Filling Gaps in Global Safety Standards
A safety instrumented function (SIF)'s purpose is to reduce the risk of a specific hazard. For example, an upset condition in an oil and gas production separator may cause a series of SIFs within a safety instrumented system (SIS) to shut in the wells feeding the...
Safeguarding Against Tank Overfills
When storage tanks overflow they can create safety hazards, environmental issues, facility damage and reputation loss. It is critical to have an effective overfill prevention strategy. In this quick, 2:34 video, Overfill prevention solutions help safeguard operations,...
Cures for Common Tank Gauging Problems
Accurately knowing the level in liquid storage tanks is not only important from a safety standpoint, it's important to know for accounting, finance, and sales perspective. Accurate and reliable tank gauging systems can improve the performance of the oil & gas,...
When is a Safety Integrity Level Rating of a Valve Required?
Control valves play a large role in process control. Emerson's Riyaz Ali shared with me that he is often asked about their use in safety instrumented functions (also known as safety loops). When asked recently, he shared an ISA Safety Division newsletter from the fall...
Control Valve Suitability in Safety Applications
Sometimes an email exchange turns up something developed years ago that still has great value. So is this case with an article I received as an attachment on final control elements and their suitability in safety instrumented functions (SIFs), a.k.a. safety loops. The...
Level Switches in Tank Overfill Safety Applications
Level measurements, especially in safety critical applications such as tank overspill protection, continue to advance in capability, accuracy and reliability. In this 3:16 YouTube video, Prevent overfills & decrease operating costs with Rosemount 2100 vibrating...
Improving Process Safety without a Calculator
If you're not fluent in Polish, you may have missed a recent Automatyka article, Bezpieczeństwo funkcjonalne zgodne z normami [Functional Safety Compliance]. Emerson's Andy Crosland and Ryszard Boroń wrote it and provided me an English translation of the article so...
Wired Versus Wireless Risk Analysis for Process Instrumentation Measurements
How does wireless communications compare against wired communications for process instrumentation? That was the subject of an Emerson Exchange presentation by Kenexis' Ed Marszal and Emerson's Gary Hawkins. Their presentation, Risk analysis of wired versus wireless...
Safety Instrumented System Solenoid-Operated Valve Approaches
Last week at the Emerson Exchange conference, I caught up with Emerson's Riyaz Ali. You may recall Riyaz from many safety instrumented system-related posts. We discussed some of the trends in integrated positioners + solenoid valves + limit switches + valve position...
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The opinions expressed here are the personal opinions of the authors. Content published here is not read or approved by Emerson before it is posted and does not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Emerson.