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Willie Coetzee started his career at Sasol Technology
and soon headed a major technology development pro-
ject in the Sasol Secunda Clean Fuels environment. In
2013 he joined CDE Process where he assumed the lead
engineering role on an R2 billion, UCG to Energy project.
Currently Willie is the founder and managing director of
Auctus Holdings and has recently established TerraServ, a company wholly
dedicated to turning waste to useful products.
Chris Potgieter started his chemical engineering career in
the SA nuclear and fluorochemical industry in the ‘80s. His
experience as member of the Applied Fluorine Engineering
Group and success as project leader in hazardous chemi-
cal process development and the associated market de-
velopment of hydrofluoric acid utilisation plants triggered
his interest in hazardous chemical process technology commercialisation.
Over the past 20 years Chris has honed his skills in building sound revenue
streams for upstart businesses and growing strong relationships with key
stakeholders like the environmental authorities. Chris established BFluor
Chemicals in 2007. Enquiries: Email
chris@bfluor.co.zaConclusion
Hazard studies are not immune to human failure due to their nature
and the nature of the humans doing the studies. This opens up the
possibility for critical design flaws to be overlooked in the Hazard
study process resulting in a design which is either critically flawed
or is not inherently safe. This said, HAZOP and SIL studies remain an
effective means of identifying and mitigating process design flaws
and inherent safety risks. Advanced Hazard study tools/systems can
be used by a skilled facilitator to further enhance the value of such
studies and streamline the process to mitigate the possibility of hu-
man failure occurring due to the inherent failures of the HAZOP and
SIL process.
The two questions that we are still faced with are:
• How do we keep human discretion in the HAZOP process, whilst
eliminating the human factor (the impact of human failure)?
• How do we ensure intact transfer of the complete details of the
safe design and design intent over to the operating personnel,
especially in the long run?
Acknowledgement
This topic was presented at the Safety Control Systems & Hazardous
Areas Conference 2015 held in Midrand, Johannesburg (organised
by IDC Technologies). The authors thank Pamela Prinsloo (BFluor
Chemicals) and Neels Welgemoed (Quadro Chemicals Engineering)
for their contribution to the paper and presentation.
HAZARDOUS AREAS + SAFETY
take note
Figure 4: Basic P&ID for the HF transfer and dilution system including first round HAZOP and SIL recommendations.
• Hazard studies are useful tools in the design of safe and
operable processing plants.
• Information from hazard studies can be used to identify and
mitigate risks and to further requirements for plant safety
training.
• Hazard studies are not immune to human failure owing to
human error.
Electricity+Control
March ‘16
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