With dairy, meat and other agricultural products making up a significant proportion of our food chain, it’s no surprise that we have a large number of ammonia refrigeration plants operating around the world.
Refrigeration plants can use a variety of motive fluids, with one of the most common materials for large-scale plants being anhydrous ammonia. Ammonia is commonly used as a motive fluid for several reasons:
All of these points make ammonia a great option for use in large-scale refrigeration plants, however unfortunately, ammonia also has a few properties that make its use rather hazardous:
With the sheer number and scale of ammonia refrigeration plants being operated across the world, one might expect that operators would have a good understanding and appreciation for the hazards involved with anhydrous ammonia. However, evidence from several incidents, some very recent, has shown that there are still some serious shortfalls in how some facilities are being operated.
Several factors appear to have contributed to the frequency of incidents at ammonia refrigeration facilities. Here are some of the more prevalent ones.
An ongoing theme I have observed while working with companies operating ammonia refrigeration facilities has been the lack of in-house expertise when it comes to the hazards of working with anhydrous ammonia. Many operators will outsource their ammonia operations to external contractors while assuming that they will handle the process safety requirements of their site, however, this is not sufficient to effectively manage process safety at their facility.
Operating companies need to have good process safety knowledge for their business across the board, this is not just a recommendation but a legal requirement in many countries.
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Many refrigeration plants operating in Australia and NZ are several decades old. Over time, these facilities have been upgraded and expanded to keep up with our growing industry. It’s not uncommon to find several separate ammonia refrigeration loops at one site, or systems that have had significant changes tacked on over the years to the point the site resembles something like the Frankenstein monster. Having several semi-separate systems increases a facility's complexity and therefore significantly increases the risk for something to go wrong.
With refrigeration being a utility process for the meat and dairy industry, it is rare to find an operator where refrigeration is their primary business. All too often this part of the process comes second to production and food safety, and the required attention for working with such a hazardous substance is not always as good as it ought to be.
It’s worth noting the significant efforts many businesses have been making to improve process safety within their facilities.
Several companies operating ammonia refrigeration facilities have taken significant strides in improving process safety at their plants. Businesses have taken up in-house expertise on process safety, engaged with consultants, and invested significant time and money into identifying the hazards at their facilities and improving safeguards to manage their risk.
Below are a few points that an operator of a refrigeration facility must understand before they can effectively manage the risk at their site:
To achieve this understanding, companies should develop a comprehensive and coherent safety assessment (CCSA). This process broadly includes the following steps:
To help you figure out how well you are doing with managing the risk at your facility, we have made available a self-audit that covers the key areas of a comprehensive and coherent safety assessment.