Understanding Functional Safety in Gas and Flame Detection

On March 22nd 2022, Petro Online are hosting an online session for safety officers, consultants, and directors in the petroleum, petrochemical and natural gas sectors who’d like to brush up on their understanding of functional safety in gas and flame detection systems.

Just a glance at the news will reveal that explosions and fires in the oil and gas industries can be frighteningly common. In just the last few weeks, there have been two high-profile explosions; an explosion at a refinery operated by Marathon Petroleum in Garyville, Louisiana and an exploded gas cylinder in the middle of Abu Dhabi. Clearly, then, these industries could be safer. 

The question, of course, is: how?  

In 2010, the International Electrotechnical Commission published IEC 61508, which sets out the requirements for ensuring that systems are designed, implemented, operated and maintained to provide the required safety-integrity level, or SIL. There are four different safety-integrity levels, with SIL1 denoting functions which have the smallest impact on risk and SIL4 denoting those with the most. For each application, then, different standards of safety apply. 

Safety-integrity levels, though, are only the first part of functional safety, which is the safety provided by a system’s design. The second aspect of functional safety are safety instrumented functions, or SIFs. These are components which act automatically to sense, react to and control specific dangers or malfunctions. Importantly, every SIF has an SIL – every one of these functional components guarantees some degree of risk reduction. 

When designing or assessing a system with a capacity for functional safety, then, it is important to be able to think of the system in terms of SIFs and SILs – and this session will help you to do just that. 

With two experienced, industry-based speakers, Stephen B. Harrison of sbh4 and François Ampe of Teledyne, and a decorated moderator, Tom Lynch CChem FRSC, formerly of BP, the meeting is sure to provide attendees with a wealth of applicable insight and a sense of the cutting-edge in functional safety. All you have to do is register your interest.