“What a pure blessing it was to have a bath in a tub alone in a room where all you had to do was pump the water, not tote buckets.” — Nancy E. Turner Somewhere in every process facility, liquids flow through pipes. Sometimes that flow is pulled by gravity. Some facilities push the liquid [...]
“I have so much paperwork. I’m afraid my paperwork has paperwork.” — Gabrielle Zevin One of the key differences between OSHA’s Process Safety Management (PSM) standard and the EPA’s Risk Management Planning (RMP) rule is the RMP rule’s requirement to submit documentation to the EPA. OSHA has no similar requirement for submission. If OSHA wants [...]
“Don’t be misled by History, or any other unreliable source.” — Will Rogers I remember when I lost faith in safety data sheets – SDSs. Well, they were called Material Safety Data Sheets – MSDSs – then. I was a young engineer, and the only engineer, at a start-up. My boss, the owner, assigned me [...]
“A rule without exceptions is an instrument capable of doing mischief to the innocent and bringing grief—as well as injustice—to those who should gain exemptions from the rule’s functioning.” — Derrick Bell I don’t remember when I first realized that there is a difference between process safety management and Process Safety Management. Process safety—the aspect [...]
“I had thought fermentation was controlled death.” — Michelle Zauner I enjoy touring distilleries. I love seeing the process of making whiskey, but I’m usually taken aback when we get to the fermentation step. Occasionally, the fermenters are enclosed and vent to the roof. Most fermenters that I see, however, are open top vats. This [...]
“Ventilation is the profound secret of existence.” — Peter Sloterdijk Most people, when hearing about the legal limits of ethanol, will think of Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC). Except for Utah, where the BAC limit for driving is 0.05%, the BAC limit in the United States is 0.08%. That applies to drivers that are 21 years [...]
“Ignorance is not too dangerous. If you combine it with power, then this is a toxic mix.” — Yuvai Noah Harari Not surprisingly, eighteen of the thirty incidents in Volume 3 of the Chemical Safety Board’s series on incident reports addressed incidents at refineries and large chemical complexes. One incident in Volume 3, though, was [...]
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” — Leo Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina I once worked with a facility that discharged process equipment cleaning water to the city sewer. They had a tough time staying below the discharge limits for copper. In turned out that the city water [...]
“Tastes like heaven, burns like hell.” — Fireball slogan Tequila is a far cry from the cloying cinnamon-flavored spirit called Fireball. But they both have one thing in common: they burn like hell. Literally. As do all spirits. For reference, the flash point of 80 proof (40% ABV) spirits, is 26 C (79°F), meaning [...]
“You have to be prepared to take a spill.” — Shaun White Not long ago, a friend and I were watching a movie where one of the characters, despondent and bereft, stumbled down the street while clutching a bottle of spirits. As the character unlocked the door to his home, the bottle slipped from his [...]
