Exploration of relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior in the Chinese oil industry

Safety performance is comprised of two components, safety compliance and safety participation. However, relationships between safety performance and unsafe behavior have not been thoroughly investigated. In this work, scales for safety compliance and safety participation were revised for use in the oil industry, and job burnout scale was developed on the basis of the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey (MBI-GS). A structural equation model was then employed to investigate the interactions of these factors for 238 front-line oil workers from the PetroChina Huabei Oilfield Company in China. From the results, it was determined that workers' unsafe behavior could not be reduced significantly solely from these two dimensions of safety performance. Compared with safety participation, safety compliance was found to have a greater influence on unsafe behavior. However, job burnout was found to be a significant moderator between these two components and unsafe behavior. Furthermore, it was determined that oil workers' occupational psychological health conditions must be taken into account to improve organizational safety management and reduce workers’ unsafe behavior.     

Trends in causes of offshore releases by severity classification

The Hydrocarbon Release Database (HCRD) contains data on loss of containment events in the UK sector of the North Sea. The data shows a decrease in the annual number of releases. A study was carried out to determine whether statistically significant trends are apparent when categorizing releases by severity and specific cause. It was investigated whether the relative contribution of some causes as compared to all releases, had changed over time.The main conclusion is that over the analysed period (1993–2014), the relative contribution of “Procedures” as a cause for release has decreased with statistical significance. “Design” improvements seem to lead to a reduction in releases too. Finally, “Equipment” was improving at the slowest rate, if at all, until 2005. Since then, it appears to improve as well. These findings are robust, at least for the total set of data, and the releases of Significant severity. For releases of Major severity, the number of incidents is too small to justify any conclusion on trends.The conclusions suggest that over the analysed period improvements in offshore safety have been mainly driven by improvements in management, covering elements like procedures, competence and compliance.     

Numerical simulation of small-scale pool fires of LNG

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) has been largely indicated as a promising alternative solution for the transportation and storage of natural gas. In the case of accidental release on the ground, a pool fire scenario may occur. Despite the relevance of this accident, due to its likelihood and potential to trigger domino effects, accurate analyses addressing the characterization of pool fires of LNG are still missing.In this work, the fire dynamic simulator (FDS) has been adopted for the evaluation of the effects of the released amount of fuel and its composition (methane, ethane, and propane), on the thermal and chemical properties of small-scale LNG pool fire. More specifically, the heat release rate, the burning rate, the flame height, and thermal radiation, at different initial conditions, have been evaluated for pool having diameter smaller than 10 m. Safety distances have been calculated for all the investigated conditions, as well.Results have also been compared with data and correlations retrieved from the current literature. The equation of Thomas seems to work properly for the definition of the height over diameter ratio of the LNG pool fire for all the mixture and the investigated diameters.The addition of ethane and propane significantly affects the obtained results, especially in terms of radiative thermal radiation peaks, thus indicating the inadequacy of the commonly adopted assumption of pure methane as single, surrogate species for the LNG mixture.     

Effects of release pressure on the transportation characteristics in pipeline and the diffusion behaviors in enclosure space of typical gas extinguishing agent

Reducing the release pressure of fire extinguishing systems can decrease potential safety hazards in large transport airplanes. To explore whether reducing the release pressure can achieve the release effect required by the airworthiness standards or not, the transportation characteristics in the pipeline and diffusion behaviors in the enclosure space of a typical fire extinguishing agent (Halon 1301) were investigated under five release pressures in the present study. The effects of the release pressure on the degree of superheat, injection duration, jet structure, and concentration distribution of Halon 1301 were analyzed. The results show that both of the degree of superheat and the injection duration decrease with an increase in the release pressure. The supplement of bubble expansion in the fire extinguishing agent can slow down the pressure decrease in the vessel. Both of the maximum and mean values of the pipeline differential pressure increase with an increase in release pressure. The maximum value of the jet angle decreases linearly with the increase in release pressure, and the jet deflects upward owing to the effects of buoyancy. The maximum concentration value decreases with an increase in the distance from the nozzle. The maximum concentration values in the near field from the nozzle increase with an increase in the release pressure. Under five release pressures, the concentration and holding time (duration above 6% volume concentration) of Halon 1301 on the centerline of the jet meet the requirements of airworthiness provisions.     

Safety I–II,resilience and antifragility engineering: a debate explained through an accident occurring on a mobile elevating work platform

Occupational health and safety (OHS) represents an important field of exploration for the research community: in spite of the growth of technological innovations, the increasing complexity of systems involves critical issues in terms of degradation of the safety levels. In such a situation, new safety management approaches are now mandatory in order to face the safety implications of the current technological evolutions. Along these lines, performing risk-based analysis alone seems not to be enough anymore. The evaluation of robustness, antifragility and resilience of a socio-technical system is now indispensable in order to face unforeseen events. This article will briefly introduce the topics of Safety I and Safety II, resilience engineering and antifragility engineering, explaining correlations, overlapping aspects and synergies. Secondly, the article will discuss the applications of those paradigms to a real accident, highlighting how they can challenge, stimulate and inspire research for improving OHS conditions.     

Law of variation for low density polyethylene dust explosion with different inert gases

To reveal the effects of different inert gases on explosion characteristics during low density polyethylene (LDPE) dust explosion and optimize the explosion-proof process, eight N₂ (CO₂)/air mixed inerting conditions were experimentally studied. Typical inerting conditions with 12 L cylindrical explosive tank were used to study the characteristics on the flame propagation. The thermogravimetric analysis with related theories were used to further explain the mechanism and quantities in low density polyethylene (LDPE) dust explosion with different inert gases. The results showed that the reduction of O₂ concentration could effectively delay the progress of flame growth process and weaken the effect of dust combustion reaction. The flame growth process of condition (N₂/air (18% O₂)) was 2.05 times slower than that of the non-inert condition. The explosion strength was obviously reduced, and the characteristic parameters such as explosion pressure and flame propagation speed were also affected by the decrease of O₂ concentration. For LDPE powder, the smaller the median diameter, the greater the explosion intensity and the lower the limiting oxygen content (LOC). The LOC with CO₂ was usually higher than that with N₂ and the effect of CO₂ was significantly better than N₂ in inerting.     

安全在矿区可持续发展体系中的地位

以矿区可持续发展指标体系为对象,通过对大量的调查统计数据的分类统计排序分析以及模糊聚类分析等,探讨了人们对安全在矿区可持续发展体系中的地位的认识问题,并得出一个重要子集作为矿区可持续发展的重要环节     

易燃、易爆重大危险源评价的计算机系统设计

论述了重大危险源评价模型用计算机实现的方法和技术,给出了评价系统的模块划分及部分算法的编程技巧,列举了用此算法建立的计算机评价系统的部分运行示例     

湿式煤气柜施工安全措施的制订

针对正在运行的湿式煤气柜防火间距不够的位置动火建造大10倍的湿式煤气柜的实际情况,采取现场调查、安全系统分析,制订切实可行的措施,顺利完成施工任务。     

试论冶金企业职业安全卫生评价技术和方法

介绍了安全卫生评价的目的和要求,同时介绍了职业安全卫生评价的方法。