Process Hazard Analysis, commonly known as PHA is one of the 20 elements of Process safety management elements and is key to achieving process safety in chemical industries. The process hazard analysis should be carried out for all plants prior to their commissioning and again every five years once.
Conducting PHA for a chemical plant helps to answer the following key questions:
- What can go wrong in my plant?
- If that happens, what will be the extent of damage?
- How frequently, or what is the probability, things would go wrong to result in such damage?
- Are the current preventive and mitigative measures adequate for the above situation?
- If they are not enough, what additional measures I need to provide?
There are more than 12 methods to carry out PHA for a chemical plant and the most popular and widely used PHA method is Hazard and Operability Study (HAZOP). Though HAZOP will fit in most situations, other methods will be required to be applied depending upon the system chosen.
At QPES we undertake PHA studies and use one or more of the 12 PHA methods for conducting the process hazard analysis as appropriate to the system under study.