(117cf) Process Safety Manuscript Archives Available to the Practitioner

Since 1967, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) has sponsored a series of safety symposia. The goal of these symposia is to reduce the frequency and severity of accidents in the chemical process industries. The Safety and Health Division of AIChE was established to serve as a central hub for collection and dissemination of this process safety information. Over the years, this dissemination expanded to several process safety symposia tracks at Global Congress on Process Safety. Three symposia manuscripts have been assembled and archived into a data base accessible on the Internet through the AIChE Academy.

• Loss Prevention Symposium (LPS)
• Process Plant Safety Symposium (PPSS)
• Center for Chemical Process Safety (CCPS) Symposium

The technical papers presented at these symposia cover a wide range of topics such as fire protection, risk reduction, explosion analysis, plant maintenance practices, process safety management and many other topics

Prior to the year 2005, the technical papers were largely printed in paper proceedings and a select few were later published in the AIChE Journal Process Safety Progress. In many cases the only record of major research programs on process safety are to be found in the paper proceedings.

In 2019 the Safety and Health Division of AIChE started a project to scan and digitize all of the paper process safety technical papers from the initiation in 1967 until 2005. A total of 2524 papers were scanned, proof checked, and organized into a form which can be used to search for available technical information on process safety topics. The historical information is useful because the chemistry and hazards have not changed. A searchable spreadsheet of the contents of the archives was created. This paper describes the organization of the Process Safety Archives and presents an example of how the archives can be used to find information.