This June a number of production accidents associated with hazardous chemicals revealed serious defects in Hazchem operations and safety design in China’s local chemical workshops. Yesterday (25 June) the agency drew attention to recent “flash explosions” and “chemical tank blast or leakage incidents” that occurred in Shandong, Liaoning and Shanghai resulting in a death toll of over ten people. On the same day, a joint notice was released by the SAWS and the MOHURD (China’s ministry on housing and urban-rural development) to regulate and optimize the construction of Hazchem facilities. SAWS Notice 76 of 2013 is expected to exert pressure on affected local companies to “substantially enhance their inherent safety and eliminate potential risks from the source”.
As a relatively new EHS concept brought into China, “inherent safety” is specifically associated with the chemical and process industries. An inherently safe process has a low level of danger even if things go wrong. As perfect safety cannot be achieved, common practice is to talk about inherently safe design. Such designing approaches enable more protective production devices or systems so that a chemical accident may be avoided even when a malfunction or misoperation takes place.
In order to promote the domestication of inherently safe design among Chinese HazChem construction projects, the agency has emphasized four main principles:
Qualification of the design institutes (Infrastructural). Construction projects involved with any priority hazardous process, any hazardous chemical under priority management or any HazChem major hazardous installations (in short as “three particular types of projects”) must be designed by institutes qualified for integrated engineering designs or corresponding A-class institute qualified for chemical engineering, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals and medicine, or petroleum and gas.
Respective responsibilities of the constructing units and design institutes. The legal representative of the design institute has lifelong liability for the safety design of the project undertaken. The constructing unit should request, in the construction contract, the design institute to perform HAZOP (Hazard and Operability Analysis) checks. Newly-built projects and “three particular types of projects” must carry out the HAZOP check during the initiating stage.
Whole process management of the safety design. The design agency should conduct the identification of HazChem major hazard installation during the preliminary study or feasibility study. In the phase of foundation engineering design, the designer should have eight main documents reviewed, including general layout, explosive and hazardous areas, piping and instruments diagram (PID), detecting system of flammable and toxic medium leakage, etc. Other process management factors include supplementary documents in addition to the construction blueprints such as technical support for test run system testing, and an assessment visit within 2 years after the completion of the project.
Existing standards on safety design and requirements on specific projects. The “three particular types of projects” should apply at least the eight GB standards on safety design indicated in the Notice (GB50187, GB50489, GB50160, GB50183, GB50016, GB50074, GB50493 and AQ/T3033). The notice additionally outlines some noteworthy design requirements that concern explosive projects, liquefied hydrocarbon tank group, fire dikes used for flammable liquid tank group, supporting steelwork, safety instrument system (SIS), refilling devices of flammable/explosive/toxic liquefied gases, HazChem piping, low-temperature/pressured vessels, and fire-proof walls in the console cabinet and rack room.
