Utilize plant data from emergency relief events to test design methods: A proposal to the AIChE DIERS users group

Advanced methods for the design of emergency relief systems were developed under the auspices of the AIChE Design Institute for Emergency Relief Systems (DIERS). Rapid progress has continued, but most testing has been done at laboratory or small pilot plant scale. Full scale tests of design methods for emergency relief systems are much needed, but would be prohibitively expensive. Proposed here is a practical alternative: Use existing production data from operating plants to test design methods for emergency relief systems. Fortunately, although most emergency pressure relief events represent plant upsets and lost production, the relief system prevents a catastrophe in most process upsets. However, the qualitatively successful operation of an emergency relief system in a given upset does not represent proof of the design method employed. More importantly, it does not guarantee that the existing relief system will perform successfully in every credible upset that the process might experience in the future. Advocated here is an industry‐wide program to use data from selected process upsets to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of current emergency relief system design methods to quantitatively predict the performance of existing emergency relief systems. Products of this effort would include confirmation of a significant number of existing design methods, identification of deficiencies in current methods, and a published compendium of documented and evaluated case histories of full‐scale relief system performance. In addition to its instructive value to workers in emergency relief, the compendium could be used to test new design methods. This proposal is offered to the AIChE DIERS Users' Group. The DIERS Users' Group, which is comprised of over one hundred member companies, has representatives qualified to define, organize, sponsor, and execute a multi‐company research program of this type. (NOTE: At the semiannual meeting of the AIChE DIERS Users' Group in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on September 9, 1996, this proposal was presented to and adopted by the DIERS Users' Group and assigned to the Case Histories Committee.)