Change Impact on Relief System Design (Understanding equipment impact and the evaluation warranted)

Various scenarios can cause the pressure within equipment to exceed design pressure. Appropriately sized relief devices are one of the most common methods of protecting equipment and personnel operating this equipment. A key challenge to being in compliance is the dynamic nature of processing plants. Numerous changes can be expected to happen over the lifecycle of a processing plant. Management of Change, one of the Process Safety Management (PSM) elements, requires equipment impact evaluation when these changes occur to ensure adequate pressure relief. This presentation talks about numerous types of changes which will impact equipment and warrant overpressure protection re-evaluation. Additionally, a case study is presented where gaps in MOC process along with other deficiencies resulted in a catastrophic failure of a reboiler.