Safety in Works

Keywords: Ammonium nitrate safety, Risk evaluation, Legal safety requirements, Accident prevention, Safety in practice.

SAFETY IN WORKS

SAFETY OF PRODUCTS AND RAW MATERIALS.

Introduction.

Today, where public opinion and political interest are concentrated on environment-control, there is in industry an extra stimulation to take all the necessary safety measures to prevent accidents. This concerns also the fertiliser industry, which has grown very fast in the last decades. This growth has also resulted in more and more concentrated products, such as liquid ammonia, fertiliser-grade ammonium nitrate and concentrated compound fertilisers.

Larger quantities of products of more hazardous character are being stored in the fertiliser industry and in its distribution networks than in the past. For this reason a chapter is included concerning risk evaluation. This subject is rather new and has become over the last five years more and more the basis of the safety regulations. Past safety rules for storage and tanks for dangerous goods consist generally of safety measures or construction rules to prevent an accident.

Risk evaluation attempts to give a picture of the situation should a calamity occur in spite of all these preventive measures. By the aid of this prognosis precautions such as evacuation, protection of fire brigade against detonation, etc. can be planned in advance. Moreover such an analysis helps to convince the responsible people of the need for such safety measures. In general risk evaluation starts people thinking.

The following hazardous raw materials and products are distinguished in fertiliser industry:

• liquid ammonia
• ammonium nitrate, nitrate-containing fertilisers
• acids such as phosphoric acid, sulphuric acid and nitric acid.
• solutions containing ammonium-nitrate, e.g. AN-H₂O, AN-NH₃-H₂O etc.
• Because of the length, it was decided to restrict this paper to the treatment of the safety aspects of ammonium-nitrate and nitrate-containing fertilisers. It is suggested to devote one or two special papers to the other items.

G Perbal, UKF, Netherlands

18 Pages, 5 Figures, 26 Refs.