(189c) Safe State: Preparing Ethylene Units for Severe Cold Weather Events

In February of 2021, a multi-day hard freeze weather event impacted most of the United States, including Texas and the Gulf Coast. This event resulted in widespread utility and facility outages, and significant impact to the ethylene industry. Industry impacts included an increase in process safety events, first aid and injuries, environmental exceedances, and impacts to production. This paper will explore one company’s response to this event, and subsequent decision to implement a corporate-wide cold weather directive. It will also present as a case-study the actions taken by one facility to incorporate this directive into a unit-specific approach for a Gulf Coast ethylene unit.

In December of 2022, another cold weather event gave the company and site an opportunity to put these new weather policies into practice, this paper will compare the response and learnings from this subsequent event.

The intent of this paper is to give ethylene producers some tools and best practices to take back to facilities, to better prepare ethylene units for severe freezing weather events.