Managing Process Hazards in Lab-scale Pilot Plant for Safe Operation

Injuries, accidents or even fatalities due to direct exposure of process hazards while working in the pilot plant are reported worldwide. As real test room, pilot plant contains unique and critical hazards which reflect both the variety and the scale of their operations. Many institutions may have the internal guidelines for controlling hazards or risk in chemical laboratories including pilot plant such as Chemical Hygiene Plan (CHP). However, the required approach to manage this process hazards is not same. It is highly notice such internal guidelines may have limitation to manage process hazards in pilot plant. Therefore, a new systematic approach should be introduced to increase safe operations and prevent accident injuries, fatalities and properties damage at pilot plant .One of the promising standard that could address this issue is Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) of OSHA Process Safety Management (PSM) CFR 1910.119(e). This paper presents a framework of Process Hazard Management for Lab-Scale Pilot Plant (PHM-LabPP) following the CFR 1910.119(e) standard. PHM-LabPP was successfully implemented at High Gravitational Natural Gas pilot plant as a case study. PHM-LabPP is easy to implement, effectively manage the process hazards and ensure safe operation of pilot plant through systematic monitoring of the corrective actions.