Health, Safety, and Environmental Risk Assessment for Hydrocracker Unit of Bandar Abbas in Refinement of Oil Company by EFMEA Method

Introduction
Organizations try to have a safe and healthy work environment without any pollution and damages. Health
Safety Environment (HSE) system is a tool for improving health, safety, and environmental conditions in all
industrial and non-industrial development programs. The system uses all human and financial resources to
provide people with a safe environment without any risk (Farshad et al., 2006). Hydrocracker unit in refinement
of Oil Company of Bandar Abbas is an important refinement unit. Its activities may cause many environmental
and hazardous problems. The purpose of this study is to assess the situation of health, safety, and environment by
Environmental Failure Mood and Effect Analysis (EFMEA) to minimize the negative effects and provide a risk
management program. Failure Mood Effect Analysis emerged for assessment of safety in systems is used to
detect any possible defects in systems and subsystems based on quantitative analyses. This was modified in some
ways into EFMEA as a qualitative method. The later is applied for production development with the purpose to
characterize and prioritize environmental perspectives (Dahlstrom, 2006). In this study the method is used in a
combination of two kinds of domestic and international forms to design the hydrocracker form. The perspectives
of the unit activities are identified normal and repairing times.
By a literature review on HSE this can be revealed that FMEA played an effective role in specification and
measurement of performance indices. The researches indicated that EFMEA, in addition to finding accidental
aspects, can reduce harmful environmental impacts (Jozi et al., 2006). After ISO9001 was effectively founded,
the EFMEA and also FMEA were introduced as a method to detect possible environmental failures and evaluate
the related risks (Jennings, 2008).
Methodology
In this study we have attempted to evaluate the aspects of the failures in normal, abnormal, and emergency
situations with combination of two forms provided for Iran and international levels. EFMEA method is
conducted by a variety of experts (Tingstrom, et al., 2006) and the entire unit, thus, is as statistical population for
this study. The method is carried out in the following stages: identification of processes, potential failures as
perspectives, consequences of the potential failures as the effects, severity in two magnitudes of environmental
and health risks, situation including three states of normal, abnormal, and emergency, potential causes of
failures, occurrence as the repetition of the failure by a cause, detection as precautious measures, ranking of
resources consumption, raw material and energy, ranking of intensity of the effects or the amount of resource
consumption, ranking of probability of occurrence and detection for resource consumption, determination of
Risk Priority Number (RPN), recommended precautious measures based on RPN, and ranking of the
perspectives in hydrocracker unit. Designed form of hydrocracker identifies environmental, safety, and health
perspectives. For the identification the present situation is first recognized in safety and health perspectives.
The analysis has been in two different stages: first the RPN was calculated with degree of hazardous using
frequency distribution of data. Second, number of classes was then calculated. For this method the
environmental perspectives have been entered in EFMEA form and the RPN calculated based on severity,
probability of occurrence, and detection. After the degree ofh azard is obtained, the perspectives are ranked
based on the RPN and those more than the hazard value are considered as critical activities. For the first stage the
RPNs have been sorted descending. For hazard value has been calculated by frequency distribution that requires
number and the length of classes.
Results and discussions
In the unit 24 activities have been investigated in normal times and 6 activities in repairing times. Recognition
and ranking of the perspectives have been based on previous experiences of occurred events as well as objective
observations. Up to 291 perspectives have been identified and evaluated in life cycle of production,
consumption, and waste removal. From these about 119 perspectives has RPN more than hazard value. The risk
value has been determined at 113. Thus, the perspectives more than this value are considered as critical
activities. Then, 10 percent of the prioritized RPNs are categorized in three groups of risks as very high, high,
and moderate. Some recommended advices have been suggested for these groups. In the EFMEA forms that
have been designed in this research for this hydrocracker unit, the perspectives of safety and health risks have
been identified and evaluated in addition to environmental perspectives. Therefore, this form improved the
quantitative forms of Rezazadeh Niavarani (2004) and that of Lindahl (2000) and made it better for identification
and evaluation of the research requirements.
Conclusions
From these results it can be concluded that the highest perspective has been the environmental risk in times of
substantial repairing with RPN of 343 for consumption. The most quantities of risks are for health and security
with 68 risks relative to those of environment with 54. Therefore, the results and discussions indicate that this
hydrocracker unit has a relatively safe, healthy and environmental control system. But, because of the
performance of the system in high pressure and high temperature condition, modification and control conditions
seems necessary for promoting the security measures. The innovation of this study is that it improved the
previous forms for a more competent application.