Avoiding catastrophic failure of your process using relevant data

Regulation and Best Practice means that any process handling hazardous materials must adequately assess and consider their process in full, including non-designed operation. Many risk assessments can be used and chosen for their relevance to the specific process, but RAs based on invalid data or assumptions on material behaviour cannot function as expected. A Basis of Safety must be built on accurate and relevant process safety data, which may be found in literature but thought must be made as to whether the process itself manipulates or converts the material to a more hazardous state. The best way to ensure assessments are appropriate is to test materials in the form in which they are present in any process. Testing should emulate a worst-case scenario, so that if the worst should happen the process is designed adequately to deal with such an event. Industrial Explosion Hazards testing of fine solid dust materials, gasses and vapours, and electrostatic properties can inform: first on avoiding any potential for explosions to occur; secondly should they happen that your equipment on plant can deal with such a scenario. Chemical Reaction Hazards testing informs on the inherent reaction heats present in any desired reaction, alongside any potential for further decomposition mechanisms and for a runaway reaction to occur. Knowledge of such material properties allow for proper plant design and engineering, from early stage at R&D to production and validation of old systems.