You are here: Home :: Area NEM :: Engineering :: Automation

Andreas Kroll

Prioritizing Asset Management Activities for Chemical Plants: Learning from Event Statistics

Opportunities for improved operations of chemical plants often exceed available resources and time for development and realization by number and scope. For this reason, a prioritization of the alternatives is desirable. This contribution investigates incident and loss statistics of the chemical industries in order to address one aspect of such a prioritization. In particular, statistics of insurers, risk consultants, and incident reporting authorities were evaluated. Oil refineries and Chlorine-Alkali production turned out to be interesting target industries. Pipes and piping, as well as tanks lead the record of primary causing equipment. Corrosion plays a major role. A quarter of the incidents occurs during abnormal operations. Operational failures of humans are most expensive in average and cause about a quarter of all incidents. Some possible contributions of automation and information technology for improving the situation are described.

at – Automatisierungstechnik, Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag

Print ISSN: 0178-2312
Volume: 52, 05/2004
Pages: 228 - 238

Journal homepage (external site)

Show all available items of this journal

 

Area NEM