Vented Suppressive Shielding Protects Personnel and Facilities from Potentially Explosive Events
Abstract
If you have safety responsibilities in plants that handle and process reactive materials or hazardous chemicals you know there is a potential to injure or kill someone and cause devastating damage to facilities. As liability issues in accidents continue to be defined in the courts they are used to provide monetary compensation for accident victims. The high cost of accidents and how to prevent them are always on our minds. In our business, it becomes important to design systems that minimize or mitigate the hazards of our operations. Where possible we must "Eliminate identified hazards or reduce associated risks through design, including material selection or substitution." (Mil Std 882C, para.4.3 a). If hazards can be eliminated by better design, then we don't have to rely upon safety systems that can fail, or rely upon procedures that are often not followed, to operate processes safely. Vented Suppressive Shields are unique steel structures designed to mitigate and protect personnel and facilities from the hazards of blast overpressure, fragments and fireballs. This paper provides an overview of the VSS technology that was first used over twenty years ago. It will discuss some of the structures designed and used to protect personnel and equipment from explosive reactions. Global Environmental Solutions (GES) owns the rights to the licences and patents for the VSS technology. GES employs accepted explosive safety siting analysis techniques to assess the potential blast overpressure, flame, and fragment hazards in processes. GES draws upon accepted military criteria and other commercial requirements to design effective VSS structures to defeat these identified hazards.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Aug 20, 1996
- Accession Number
- ADA509553
Entities
People
- Dan Beal