(41f) Threshold Quantity for Process Safety Metrics for Special / Coded Chemicals

An essential element in improving the process safety program is to identify existing process safety performance to improve future performance. Based on CCPS Process Safety Metrics [1] and API-754 [2] [3], a company can develop the process safety metric system. The guidance provided is not exhaustive and especially leaves interpretation of determining threshold quantities for chemical compounds with ambiguity due to the material complexities in a multi-product plant. Furthermore, the standards are US-centric and more guidance is needed for companies who want to implement it in a global scale. CCPS Process Safety Metrics suggests that without proper grouping of various compounds used in an organization, lagging process metrics becomes futile. Lagging metrics are important to identify the performance of process safety in an organization. The major step involved in implementation of lagging metrics are grouping the compounds based on its physical and chemical properties to define its threshold quantities. In recent days, many companies in India are adopting process safety metrics. The difficulty faced by these companies are grouping the materials and assigning the correct threshold quantities. Most of these companies use coded chemicals and introduce at least 50 new compounds in 2-3 months of time frame. This article provides the procedure/ workflow to classify the compounds and associated threshold quantities for those compounds whose class of the compound is not mentioned by Supplier.