Qualitative Risk Assessment and HAZOP Study of a Glass Manufacturing Industry

In the recent years, many industries have realized that maintaining good occupational health and safety is as equally important in accordance to production requirement. Hence there has been much scope for the risk assessment in order to protect the workers’ health and safety at workplace. Risk assessment is a process where the Identified hazards are evaluated to determine the potential cause of an accident and further to reduce to the lowest reasonable risk level to protect worker’s health and safety. It is a part of risk management. Risk assessment can be categorized into Qualitative and Quantitative risk assessment which is being carried out using different techniques. In this paper, an attempt has been made to carry a Qualitative risk assessment i.e. Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment and HAZOP study for the identified critical areas of a glass manufacturing industry. From the results obtained from this study, Physical Hazard is 47%, Ergonomic Hazard is 10%, Chemical Hazard is 9%, Electrical Hazard 2%, Biological Hazard 3%, Thermal Hazard is 29% etc. Risks are also categorized into Low, Medium and High risks which 12.09%, 45.05% and 42.06% respectively. Hazard analysis from the design intent for Silane and ethylene gas station is also studied using a HAZOP technique. Some of the control valves are suggested to install before the gas filter. ALOHA is also used to simulate the model to analyse the impact due to leakage from the various potential hole area in the natural gas pipeline. Leakage from the larger hole of about 324.51 sq.cm has shown the high hazardous zone - death to human beings i.e.12m down the line in the wind direction. However, periodical maintenance and monitoring of the Natural gas distribution pipelines along with Gas detection system and fire hydrant system with sprinklers can prevent the disaster.