Industry thinking: different security problems like the same industry

Safety accidents occur year after year, and safe production is caught every year. Last week, the Supervision and Administration Division of the General Administration of Production Supervision and Supervision once again brought together the heads of more than 10 professional associations in the chemical industry to in-depth exchange of safety production issues in their respective industries. Wang Haoshui, director of the supervision and management department, pointed out at the meeting that the low level of equipment, management experience and personnel quality are the three major problems that restrict the safety production in the chemical industry, and are also the main reasons leading to industrial safety accidents. From the situation reflected by various industry associations at the symposium, these three elements are the weakness of safe production in these industries.

Safety facilities However, hard nitrogen fertilizer production is a process of high temperature, high pressure, flammable and explosive. According to the introduction of Cao Zhangao, Director of the Technical Department of the China Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry Association, the overall safety situation in the nitrogen fertilizer industry in 2011 was relatively good. According to the accident inquiry system of the State Administration of Work Safety, only one safety accident occurred in the national nitrogen fertilizer industry in 2011. However, the failure of safety devices to meet the requirements has become the biggest safety hazard in the industry.

Cao Zhangao believes that there are many potential safety hazards in nitrogen fertilizer installations. First of all, the level of installations of some enterprises is not high, especially the progress of automation of some old enterprises is slow, and their security setting standards are also low. Secondly, some companies have insufficient number of flammable and toxic gas leak detection alarms installed, or their installation locations do not meet the requirements; some enterprises’ production equipment’s detection and alarm signals are only local alarms and cannot be sent to the operator’s resident control room. On-site operation room. Thirdly, some enterprises still have certain problems in adopting positive-pressure ventilation measures. The location of the positive-pressure ventilation suction outlets is located in the fire and explosion danger zone, especially the positive pressure ventilation of the compressor slip ring room, and it cannot guarantee that the inhalation is fresh air.

"In addition, insufficient space for safety protection is also a major problem facing the industry." Cao Zhangao said that there are two situations: First, the safety protection distance of nitrogen fertilizer companies is insufficient. Many companies do take full account of the protection distance when they build a factory. However, with the development of society, the old nitrogen fertilizer companies are gradually being surrounded by other enterprises, units, civil buildings, residential quarters, etc., resulting in the protection distance does not meet the requirements, and the fire prevention distance is difficult to guarantee. Second, there is insufficient fire separation between many small-scale nitrogen fertilizer production plants. Small-scale nitrogenous fertilizer companies were built in the early stage of the last century, and the scale of construction was relatively small. On the basis of the original installations, after several reforms, they have reached 50,000 tons/year, 80,000 tons/year, and even 100,000 tons/year today. Due to historical reasons, problems such as the current lack of fire-proof spacing between production plants in such old enterprises and the non-explosion-proof of electrical equipment in fire and explosion hazardous areas have caused problems.

The coating industry is similar. Liu Jie, Vice Minister of Industry Development Department of China National Coatings Industry Association, said that there are many small and medium-sized paint companies that do not have automation, and some companies still lag behind in production process. There are no flammable gas concentration alarms, fire alarms, and carbon dioxide in the workshop. Automatic fire extinguishing facilities. In addition, due to the small site, some paint companies have exceeded the original design scale, resulting in a mixture of raw materials and finished products at the production site. Some of these materials are toxic, irritating or flammable, and have poor ventilation. . For example, some enterprise power distribution rooms are located next to the solvent production plant and are very dangerous.

Due to process design flaws, there are also many cases of safety accidents. It is reported that in the production process of calcium carbide, high voltage and high current are accompanied, resulting in frequent accidents such as burning, explosion, suffocation and poisoning, mechanical injury, object hitting, falling at high altitude, and drowning. “If the overall safety of equipment and facilities is insufficient or there are misoperations, it will easily cause all kinds of major accidents. In recent years, many calcium carbide furnace accidents occurred in the calcium carbide production industry, resulting in serious casualties and major property losses. And the bad social influences.” Sun Weishan, deputy secretary-general of the China Petrochemical Federation and secretary-general of the China Calcium Carbide Industry Association, said, “To this end, we require companies to increase cameras in production workshops, reduce road inspection personnel, and control personnel in the operating room. Conduct all-round monitoring to reduce the risk.

Some companies have already carried out rectification, but some companies have not rectified because of cost issues. ”

There is also the chlor-alkali industry in the design of safety facilities. It is understood that chlor-alkali enterprises mainly have dangerous and harmful factors such as fire, explosion, poisoning, chemical burns, mechanical injuries, and falling at high places, and the production process is highly dangerous. Therefore, the chlor-alkali industry is listed as China's five highly dangerous industries together with mines, building construction, and civil explosives.

“Because there is no safe design specification for chlor-alkali chemical industry, the design institute has taken advanced safety devices at home and abroad when it considers safety facilities in the process design process. It is completely in accordance with the previous design model that passed the safety evaluation. The design of some safety facilities is obvious. There are some problems," said Liu Dongsheng, deputy secretary-general of China Chlor-Alkali Industry Association.

The lack of management experience In addition to the above hardware problems, lack of experience in safety management, etc., is also a common problem in the chemical industry.

The industrial gas industry is one of them. The industry has a wide range of products, and a large number of dangerous chemical gases such as oxygen, hydrogen, hydrogen, helium, and acetylene are used in steel, petroleum, chemical, mechanical, electronic, and light industry industries. Many use gas pressures. The equipment is transported. In social life, medical oxygen, civilian liquefied petroleum gas, compressed natural gas, etc. are also transported using gas pressure equipment. According to relevant survey data, there are nearly 16,000 gas cylinder filling units in China, more than 1,500 gas cylinder inspection stations, and nearly 1,000 bottled gas vehicle refueling stations. There are tens of thousands of related companies and business units involved in the production, operation, storage, and transportation of hazardous gas products.

According to Chung Chungan, secretary-general of the China Industrial Gas Industry Association, in recent years, the number of dangerous chemical cylinder accidents in China has remained high, and gas cylinder safety accidents rank third in the eight categories of special equipment every year. Yan Chungan said that the cause of the accident was mainly in safety management: some companies did not carry out regular inspections of gas cylinders, and continued filling during the inspection period; oxygen filling did not use anti-mistake fittings; the filling site was small, cluttered, and gas The phenomenon of random refitting of bottles is still common; some companies have certain problems in their safety staffing; there are many defects in quality management documents, and in some provinces, appraisal and evaluation organizations require gas companies to integrate gas cylinder filling stations with gas cylinder inspection stations. problem.

In recent years, the expansion of the chemical industry has accelerated, and the hidden dangers caused by the lack of safety management experience in new corporate new projects have made it difficult for some industry associations.

“The risk of PVC production is large, the situation is complex, and the conditions are changeable. The application of new technologies and new devices has made the safety management of the industry faced with new situations of device innovation and lack of operating experience. In addition, the newly expanded PVC and caustic soda projects were launched. The enterprises have built supporting calcium carbide plants and thermal power plants, and the chlor-alkali production equipment and hazardous chemicals storage facilities are showing a trend of large-scale development. The production capacity of a single set of equipment has been greatly improved, the safety risks are relatively large, and the difficulty in safety management and emergency rescue has increased.” Liu Dongsheng That is to say.

It is understood that in June 2011, Jiangsu Anbang Electrochemical Co., Ltd. accidentally occurred due to equipment failure. Although the direct cause of the accident was a defect in the equipment that led to the failure of the circulating water system, the causes of the accident were: mishandling, resulting in a large number of leaks; management defects, resulting in the failure to detect leaks into the circulating water system. The enterprise's emergency management is flawed, and the procedures for dealing with abnormal conditions are not clear enough.

Mei Shengfang, deputy secretary-general of the China Fluorine-silicone Organic Materials Industry Association, also stated that there have been more new companies entering the fluorine chemical industry in the past two years, especially hydrogen fluoride producers and tetrafluoroethylene producers, due to rigorous process management and safe production knowledge. Insufficient, the occurrence of hydrogen fluoride leakage, tetrafluoroethylene explosion and residual liquid leakage poisoning accidents increased.

The situation of the calcium carbide industry reflected by Sun Weishan is even more surprising to those present: “At present, the development of the calcium carbide industry is too fast and safety management is obviously not keeping pace.

Some companies in the industry are building 80,000 kVA of calcium carbide furnaces and even 10 million kVA. There was never such a big stove before, and the biggest one was less than 50 thousand kVA. If these stoves fail, it's no use. Safety risks cannot be ignored. ”

Inadequate training of employees, whether it is safety facilities or safety management methods, is inseparable from human operations and execution. Representatives of almost all trade associations at the symposium believed that the core security risk that currently exists in various industries is that training is not in place and employee safety knowledge is lacking, and various unexpected situations cannot be properly handled.

"Enterprises' safety mission training work is not enough. Many companies engage in safety training. The money is spent, but most of them are in formality. They have not been strictly enforced in accordance with the requirements of relevant laws and regulations on time, content, and examination. Therefore, such training The effectiveness is poor, and the coverage of training is narrow, there are many trainings for safety management personnel, and there are few production personnel training.The production department only cares for one-sided pursuit of progress and efficiency, but often neglects safety, and can not form a unified understanding with the safety and security department. The effect of training cannot be guaranteed.” Liu Dongsheng listed a series of safety training chaos in the chlor-alkali industry.

Mei Shengfang pointed out that at present, the fluorine chemical industry lacks safety production notification and exchange, and more accidents of the same type occur repeatedly. Employees and managers are unclear about the characteristics of fluorinated workers. The measures to deal with accidents and the unclear knowledge of ambulances after accidents often delay the best ambulance time. For example, a company in Jiangsu in 2010 did not understand the knowledge of the safety of the fluorine chemical workers, nightly illegal production of residual liquids, resulting in poisoning of employees in neighboring enterprises; in 2010, a fluorine chemical pipeline explosion occurred in a fluorine chemical company, the company in processing six Due to improper operation during the process of fluorine-propylene raffinate, employees inhaled highly toxic gases, and because of insufficient knowledge of safety knowledge, the salvage was not timely and resulted in death. "Although the fluorine chemical manufacturing companies all have safety management departments, due to the different quality of safety management personnel, lack of adequate exchanges and training, there are many hidden safety problems in production." Mei Shengfang said.

Sun Weishan also used actual cases to prove the lack of safety knowledge of some employees of calcium carbide companies. According to reports, on May 30, 2011, an explosion occurred in the calcium carbide workshop of the Mudanjiang Rida Chemical Plant, causing a major safety accident involving five people dead and one seriously injured. The main cause of the accident was that the operator did not follow the operating procedures and opened and blocked the observation hole under normal open conditions, causing the heat of reaction of calcium carbide to be ejected in large numbers and an accident occurred.

Some industry associations have also analyzed the reasons for the lack of knowledge about employees' safety. “In recent years, the development of coal chemical projects has been rapid, and the training rate of our industry personnel has not kept up with the pace of development. This has caused management staff and technicians, as well as operators and maintenance workers, especially instrumentation workers, to have insufficient experience and increased unsafe factors. An ordinary engineering and technical personnel of a coal chemical enterprise using pressurized coal gasification in the region may be employed as the chief engineer in the western region.” Cao Zhangao said, “Moreover, in the training of employees, many nitrogen fertilizer companies have safety certificate training, but they do not In vocational skills training, there is no guarantee of safety in the absence of professional skills."

“Some paint companies lack a rigorous safety training system. After a simple oral education for recruiting new employees, they are allowed to work on the job, and safety education is not conducted in terms of performance and toxicity of hazardous chemicals, prevention, and handling of accidental accidents. Moreover, many coatings companies in our industry are concentrated in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta region. The mobility of workers in these two regions is relatively large, and safety education is difficult, Liu Jie said.

Kang Baoxiang, deputy secretary-general of the China Dyestuff Industry Association, believes that in recent years, with the continuous expansion of the scale of enterprises in various industries and the continuous increase in the number of employed people, the three-level education for employees in safety production needs to be gradually strengthened. In particular, the education, supervision, and inspection of the safety operation procedures for first-line workers must be institutionalized and regularized.