Optima invests into improving process safety management

By February 23, 2023 March 23rd, 2023 News & Info

Belle, WV – Optima Chemical Group LLC is proud to implement a new tool towards improving safety for potentially hazardous processes. An Advanced Reactive System Screen Tool (ARSST) was recently purchased and installed in Belle, WV to aide in the understanding of process safety critical parameters. The information produced from this specialized calorimeter will be used during process planning and development for prevention of related undesirable conditions.

Safety is essential to any process operation and obtaining information is key to that. Compliance requirements and good business practices tend to have a common theme related to the adequate process safety information; It is imperative that companies have the proper level information to ensure processes can be conducted safely under both desired and worst-case scenarios. 

It is critical to understand how robust the desired reaction is to ensure that process changes do not result in catastrophic events. The ARSST is developed by Fauske and associates to serve as a rapid screening adiabatic tool that can simulate upset scenarios and be used to prevent or manage the effects of a chemical related accident. Bench scale simulations yield directly scalable data that can be used to quantitatively highlight the consequences of runaway reactions, non-condensable gas formation, cooling variations, mischarged materials, and other upset conditions. 

From a business perspective an added benefit is that it contributes directly to risk mitigation and disruption prevention. From a risk management and process safety perspective, this new investment is a natural evolutionary next step at Optima Chemicals and we are happy to include it into our future preliminary hazard assessments. We are also re-evaluating existing processes to better understand what potential hazards we have in our existing processes. 

More about our thermal analysis lab can be found here: 

https://optimachem.com/thermal-analysis-services/