Braskem's Risk Management Corporate Procedure Application to a Polymer Industrial Unit at South of Brazil

In this article we present Braskem’s risk management procedure application in a polymers industrial Unit to Reduce Risks as a way to build safer process operations through a hazard identification and risk management program and process safety culture development process.

Braskem’s risk management procedure follows an hazard evaluation program that goes throughout a plant lifetime, considering qualitative and quantitative tools and criteria, including selection of scenarios for consequence modeling and QRA.

The use of risk matrix criteria (severity and frequency), considers the international references and benchmark companies references and considers that the final risk matrix criteria definitions is a company/business definition. The same applies to the criteria to define which scenarios are necessary to do LOPA and consequence modeling analysis and quantitative risk analysis.

At planning phase the inventories and products were evaluated, and Hazop was assigned to units that had inventories above Braskem’s procedure required limit.

For those process units where the limit was not overcome was assigned a simplified risk analysis a Preliminary Hazard analysis (PHA).

A multidisciplinary team was designated to conduct the risk analyses.

As at the beginning there were no certified team leaders, DNV specialists trained the team members and lead the first analyses as a on the job certification program.

After this initial phase, Braskem DNV certified team leaders, called “Process Safety Leaders”, continued to lead the chronogram of analyses up to its completion. 

The results of analyses generated scenarios with potential risks and recommendations summarized in a potential risk matrix picture.

This information was reported on a monthly basis to team members and all managers related to the process unit and HSE management.

At the end of each system HAZOP/PHA analysis the recommendations were technically validated and reported in a corporate system, a Risk Management module under SAP system for follow-up control.

Those scenarios that applied complementary studies, are receiving LOPA and consequence analyses.

As the recommendations defined/validated during LOPA have deeper and more quantitative background, when they were different from previous HAZOP /PHA studies, they replace these.

At this stage, Hazop/PHA, LOPA and consequence analyses reported and validated a series of barriers preventive or mitigatory to each scenario.

This barriers list was organized in categories and it’s being applied a barrier management program, to achieve, when applicable, eg. for safety instrumented functions (SIF) a risk acceptance level as defined by LOPA analyses.

The quantitative risk analysis is planned to be performed when LOPA and consequence analyses are concluded.

The corporate procedure application at Polymer Unit lead to a process unit Risk Matrix building, and around it recommendations implementation that reduced or are going to reduce the identified potential risks scenarios. 

It’s seen from process safety indicators improving trend that this is a way to build safer process operations through a Hazard Identification, MOC to reduce scenarios potential risks and to manage the safety barriers identified.