ASSESSMENT OF APPROACHES FOR USING PROCESS SAFETY METRICS AT THE BLUE GRASS AND PUEBLO CHEMICAL AGENT DESTRUCTION PILOT PLANTS
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
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NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.
This study was supported by Contract No. W911NF-10-C-0066 between the National Academy of Sciences and the U.S. Army. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.
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COMMITTEE TO ASSESS PROCESS SAFETY METRICS FOR THE BLUE GRASS AND PUEBLO CHEMICAL AGENT DESTRUCTION PILOT PLANTS
OTIS A. SHELTON, Chair,
Praxair, Inc., Danbury, Connecticut
ROBERT A. BEAUDET,
University of Southern California, Pasadena
MAURICIO FUTRAN (NAE), Independent Consultant,
Westfield, New Jersey
J. ROBERT GIBSON,
Gibson Consulting, LLC, Wilmington, Delaware
RANDAL J. KELLER,
Murray State University, Murray, Kentucky
TIM OVERTON,
TOPS Consulting, Angleton, Texas
CAROL A. PALMIOTTO,
E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Wilmington, Delaware
STYRON N. POWERS,
U.S. Foodservice, Rosemont, Illinois
Staff
BRUCE A. BRAUN, Director
JAMES C. MYSKA, Senior Research Associate
DEANNA P. SPARGER, Program Administrative Coordinator
BOARD ON ARMY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ALAN H. EPSTEIN, Chair,
Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, Connecticut
DAVID M. MADDOX, Vice Chair, Independent Consultant,
Arlington, Virginia
DUANE ADAMS,
Carnegie Mellon University (retired), Arlington, Virginia
ILESANMI ADESIDA,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
RAJ AGGARWAL,
University of Iowa, Coralville
EDWARD C. BRADY,
Strategic Perspectives, Inc., Fort Lauderdale, Florida
L. REGINALD BROTHERS,
BAE Systems, Arlington, Virginia
JAMES CARAFANO,
The Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.
W. PETER CHERRY, Independent Consultant,
Ann Arbor, Michigan
EARL H. DOWELL,
Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
RONALD P. FUCHS, Independent Consultant,
Seattle, Washington
W. HARVEY GRAY, Independent Consultant,
Oak Ridge, Tennessee
CARL GUERRERI,
Electronic Warfare Associates, Inc., Herndon, Virginia
JOHN H. HAMMOND,
Lockheed Martin Corporation (retired), Fairfax, Virginia
RANDALL W. HILL, JR.,
University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies, Marina del Rey
MARY JANE IRWIN,
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
ROBIN L. KEESEE, Independent Consultant,
Fairfax, Virginia
ELLIOT D. KIEFF,
Channing Laboratory, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts
LARRY LEHOWICZ,
Quantum Research International, Arlington, Virginia
WILLIAM L. MELVIN,
Georgia Tech Research Institute, Smyrna
ROBIN MURPHY,
Texas A&M University, College Station
SCOTT E. PARAZYNSKI,
The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Houston, Texas
RICHARD R. PAUL, Independent Consultant,
Bellevue, Washington
JEAN D. REED, Independent Consultant,
Arlington, Virginia
LEON E. SALOMON, Independent Consultant,
Gulfport, Florida
JONATHAN M. SMITH,
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
MARK J.T. SMITH,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
MICHAEL A. STROSCIO,
University of Illinois, Chicago
JOSEPH YAKOVAC, JVM LLC,
Hampton, Virginia
Staff
BRUCE A. BRAUN, Director
CHRIS JONES, Financial Associate
DEANNA P. SPARGER, Program Administrative Coordinator
Preface
The Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program was mandated to use nonincineration technologies to destroy the chemical weapons stockpiles at the Pueblo Chemical Depot (PCD) in Colorado and the Blue Grass Army Depot (BGAD) in Kentucky. These two storage sites together account for about 10 percent of the original U.S. chemical agent stockpile that is in the process of being destroyed in accordance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention treaty. Disposal operations at six other sites in the continental United States and Johnston Island in the Pacific near Hawaii have already destroyed over 80 percent of the stockpile. Incineration technology was used by the now closed disposal facility on Johnston Island, and at a facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, which has completed operations and has entered closure. Chemical neutralization (hydrolysis) technology was used to destroy bulk mustard agent and VX nerve agent at the now closed facilities in Aberdeen, Maryland, and Newport, Indiana, respectively. Disposal campaigns at the three other currently operating facilities, which use incineration technology, are nearing completion.
The Pueblo site contains the larger portion of the remaining stockpile inventory in the form of various mustard agent projectiles. While the Blue Grass inventory is relatively small, it is more diverse and contains both mustard agent in various projectiles and the nerve agents GB and VX in various projectiles and M55 rockets. The two facilities being built at these sites, the Pueblo and Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plants (PCAPP and BGCAPP, respectively), will use chemical neutralization to destroy chemical agent, followed by different downstream processes to treat the resulting waste streams. PCAPP will use biotreatment to treat waste streams from chemical agent disposal, and BGCAPP will use supercritical water oxidation. PCAPP and BGCAPP will also employ a number of pieces of first-of-a-kind equipment. Both facilities have been designed using established engineering codes and principles and have incorporated lessons learned from the operation of earlier chemical agent disposal operations to ensure safe operation. PCAPP is currently under construction and is planned to start agent disposal operations in 2014. BGCAPP is also under construction, with operations to commence in 2018.
As part of its focus on safe operation of the planned facilities, the Program Manager for Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives asked the National Research Council (NRC) to conduct a study to offer guidance on the application of process safety metrics at PCAPP and BGCAPP. The committee that was assembled by the NRC held a number of meetings, virtual meetings, and teleconferences. It also visited the offices of staff working on the PCAPP and BGCAPP projects.
Among the process safety considerations discussed in this report is the applicability of the James Reason barrier model’s concept of layers of protection to the chemical processes being designed at PCAPP and BGCAPP. Also discussed extensively is the use of leading and lagging process safety metrics1 that could provide feedback on the effectiveness of controls to mitigate risks and minimize consequences of potential
1 |
“Leading metric” and “lagging metric” are defined in Appendix A. |
incidents and, it is hoped, prevent incidents that might otherwise occur. Several recommendations are made to facilitate the development and application of process safety metrics at both sites.
As chair of this committee, I want to express my sincere thanks to the members of this committee. Their insights on safety culture, especially as it relates to process safety management, were invaluable in executing the statement of task. James Myska, senior research associate at the Board on Army Science and Technology, assisted Bruce Braun, director of the Board on Army Science and Technology, in running this study. Mr. Myska excelled at keeping the committee focused and ensuring that work was accomplished in a timely manner. C.T. Anderson, a safety and surety engineer at the Program Manager for Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, was very helpful in providing timely responses to numerous committee requests for information. Raj K. Malhotra, deputy, Risk Directorate at the Chemical Materials Agency (CMA), approved committee access to records of incidents at CMA facilities to identify incident casual factors. This access was instrumental in allowing the committee to identify several leading process safety metrics. Lastly, I want to thank Deanna Sparger and Nia Johnson for their administrative and research support to the committee. Without their assistance, the preparation of the report would have been much more difficult.
Otis A. Shelton, Chair
Committee to Assess Process Safety Metrics for the Blue Grass and Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plants
Acknowledgment of Reviewers
This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the deliberative process. We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report:
Scott Berger, American Institute of Chemical Engineers Center for Chemical Process Safety;
Deborah L. Grubbe, Operations and Safety Solutions, LLC;
Alexander MacLachlan, NAE, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. (retired);
M. Sam Mannan, Mary Kay O’Connor Process Safety Center;
James F. Mathis, NAE, Exxon Corporation (retired);
George W. Parshall, NAS, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. (retired);
Ian Travers, United Kingdom Health and Safety Executive; and
Ronald Willey, Northeastern University.
Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the conclusions or recommendations nor did they see the final draft of the report before its release. The review of this report was overseen by Elisabeth M. Drake, NAE, MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment. Appointed by the National Research Council, she was responsible for making certain that an independent examination of this report was carried out in accordance with institutional procedures and that all review comments were carefully considered. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the authoring committee and the institution.
Tables, Figures, and Box
TABLES
S-1 |
First-of-a-Kind Equipment and Processes That Could Pose Significant Challenges for PCAPP and BGCAPP, |
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2-1 |
Physical Properties of Nerve Agents, |
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2-2 |
Physical Properties of Mustard Agents, |
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2-3 |
Chemical Weapons Stockpile Stored at PCD, |
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2-4 |
Chemical Weapons Stockpile Stored at BGAD, |
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2-5 |
First-of-a-Kind Equipment and Processes That Could Pose Significant Challenges for PCAPP and BGCAPP, |
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3-1 |
Frequency of Causal Factors in the 81 Chemical Events Reviewed by the Chemical Events Committee in 2002, |
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3-2 |
Frequency of Causal Factors in the 121 Events at Chemical Agent Disposal Facilities Since 2001, |
FIGURES
2-1 |
A 105-mm howitzer projectile, |
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2-2 |
A 155-mm howitzer projectile, |
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2-3 |
A 4.2-inch mortar cartridge, |
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2-4 |
An 8-inch projectile, |
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2-5 |
An M55 rocket, |
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2-6 |
PCAPP process flow chart, |
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2-7 |
BGCAPP process flow chart, |
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2-8 |
Overview of the systemization process, |
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4-1 |
Hierarchy of leading and lagging metrics illustrated by the James Reason barrier model (left) and the Pyramid model of incident categories (right), |
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4-2 |
Illustration of the Swiss cheese model, |
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4-3 |
Process flow diagram for agent neutralization, |
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4-4 |
Diagram of EBH, |
BOX
4-1 |
Definitions of Tier 1-4 Process Safety Events from API Recommended Practice (RP) 754, |
Acronyms and Abbreviations
ACWA Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives
ANCDF Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility
ANR agent neutralization reactor
ANS agent neutralization system
ANSI American National Standards Institute
APB agent processing building
API American Petroleum Institute
BGAD Blue Grass Army Depot
BGCAPP Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant
BRS brine reduction system
BTA biotreatment area
CAM cavity access machine
CCPS Center for Chemical Process Safety
CMA Chemical Materials Agency
CSB Chemical Safety Board
EBH energetics batch hydrolyzer
EDT explosive destruction technology
ENR energetics neutralization reactor
ERB enhanced reconfiguration building
FOAK first of a kind
GB a nerve agent, also known as sarin
H mustard agent
HD distilled mustard agent
HSE United Kingdom Health and Safety Executive
HT mustard agent with an additive to lower its freezing point
IOD integrated operational demonstration
JACADS Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System
LOPC loss of primary containment
LPMD linear projectile mortar disassembly
MOC management of change
MPT metal parts treater
MSM munitions storage magazine
MTU munitions treatment unit
MWS munitions washout system
NRC National Research Council
ORR operational readiness review
OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration
OTE offgas treatment system for EBH
OTM offgas treatment system for MPT
OTS offgas treatment system
PCAPP Pueblo Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant
PCD Pueblo Chemical Depot
PMACWA Program Manager for Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives
PMD projectile mortar disassembly
PSI process safety incident
PSM process safety metrics
RCM rocket cutter machine
RO reverse osmosis
RSM rocket shear machine
SCWO supercritical water oxidation
SDU supplemental decontamination unit
SFT shipping and firing tube
SOP standard operating procedure
VX a nerve agent
WRS water recovery system