Hazards Analysis, Code Compliance & Procedure Development

Services to identify process safety hazards and facilitate compliance with established standards and codes.

Combustible Dust Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify dust explosion and reactivity hazards

Flammable Gas & Vapor Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify explosion hazards for vapor and gas mixtures

Chemical Reactivity Testing

Laboratory testing to quantify reactive chemical hazards, including the possibility of material incompatibility, instability, and runaway chemical reactions

ISO Accreditation and Scope
Fauske & Associates fulfills the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2017 in the field of Testing
DIERS Methodology

Design emergency pressure relief systems to mitigate the consequences of unwanted chemical reactivity and account for two-phase flow using the right tools and methods

Deflagrations (Dust/Vapor/Gas)

Properly size pressure relief vents to protect your processes from dust, vapor, and gas explosions

Effluent Handling

Pressure relief sizing is just the first step and it is critical to safety handle the effluent discharge from an overpressure event

Thermal Stability

Safe storage or processing requires an understanding of the possible hazards associated with sensitivity to variations in temperature

UN-DOT

Classification of hazardous materials subject to shipping and storage regulations

Safety Data Sheets

Develop critical safety data for inclusion in SDS documents

Biological

Model transport of airborne virus aerosols to guide safe operations and ventilation upgrades

Radioactive

Model transport of contamination for source term and leak path factor analysis

Fire Analysis

Model transport of heat and smoke for fire analysis

Flammable or Toxic Gas

transport of flammable or toxic gas during a process upset

OSS consulting, adiabatic & reaction calorimetry and consulting

Onsite safety studies can help identify explosibility and chemical reaction hazards so that appropriate testing, simulations, or calculations are identified to support safe scale up

Mechanical, Piping, and Electrical

Engineering and testing to support safe plant operations and develop solutions to problems in heat transfer, fluid flow, electric power systems

Battery Safety

Testing to support safe design of batteries and electrical power backup facilities particularly to satisfy UL9540a ed.4

Hydrogen Safety

Testing and consulting on the explosion risks associated with devices and processes which use or produce hydrogen

Spent Fuel

Safety analysis for packaging, transport, and storage of spent nuclear fuel

Decommissioning, Decontamination and Remediation (DD&R)

Safety analysis to underpin decommissioning process at facilities which have produced or used radioactive nuclear materials

Laboratory Testing & Software Capabilities

Bespoke testing and modeling services to validate analysis of DD&R processes

Nuclear Overview

Our Nuclear Services Group is recognized for comprehensive evaluations to help commercial nuclear power plants operate efficiently and stay compliant.

Severe Accident Analysis and Risk Assessment

Expert analysis of possible risk and consequences from nuclear plant accidents

Thermal Hydraulics

Testing and analysis to ensure that critical equipment will operate under adverse environmental conditions

Environmental Qualification (EQ) and Equipment Survivability (ES)

Testing and analysis to ensure that critical equipment will operate under adverse environmental conditions

Laboratory Testing & Software Capabilities

Testing and modeling services to support resolution of emergent safety issues at a power plant

Adiabatic Safety Calorimeters (ARSST and VSP2)

Low thermal inertial adiabatic calorimeters specially designed to provide directly scalable data that are critical to safe process design

Other Lab Equipment and Parts for the DSC/ARC/ARSST/VSP2 Calorimeters

Products and equipment for the process safety or process development laboratory

FERST

Software for emergency relief system design to ensure safe processing of reactive chemicals, including consideration of two-phase flow and runaway chemical reactions

FATE

Facility modeling software mechanistically tracks transport of heat, gasses, vapors, and aerosols for safety analysis of multi-room facilities

Blog

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Process Safety Newsletter

Stay informed with our quarterly Process Safety Newsletters sharing topical articles and practical advice.

Resources

With over 40 years of industry expertise, we have a wealth of process safety knowledge to share.

Recent Posts

What is Relief System Design?

Posted by The Fauske Team on 05.02.17

"A relief system is an emergency system for discharging gas during abnormal conditions, by manual or controlled means or by an automatic pressure relief Emergency Relief System and Relief Valve Sizingvalve from a pressurized vessel or piping system, to the atmosphere to relieve pressures in excess of the maximum allowable working pressure (MAWP)." - Petrowiki

Fauske & Associates, LLC (FAI) was the principal research contractor for the Design Institute for Emergency Relief Systems (DIERS), an extensive R&D program sponsored by 29 companies under the auspices of AIChE and completed in 1985.  Company founder, Dr. Hans K. Fauske served as the principal investigator and overall leader of the DIERS research project.  A primary purpose of that effort was evaluation of emergency relief vent requirements, including energy and gas release rates for systems under upset conditions and the effect of two phase flow on the emergency discharge process.

The DIERS program resulted in the development of a bench scale low thermal inertia adiabatic calorimeter, which was first commercialized as the Vent Sizing Package (VSP). Later improvements led to the VSP2. The Reactive System Screening Tool (RSST TM) was introduced by FAI in 1989 to provide an easy, inexpensive approach to the DIERS testing method. Enhancements led to the Advanced RSST (ARSST) in 1999. FAI uses the DIERS-based VSP2 and ARSST calorimeters to characterize chemical systems and design emergency pressure relief systems. Both instruments provide vent sizing data that are directly applicable to the process scale.

Adiabatic calorimeter testing provides data for relief system design, safe scale-up of chemical processes, and changes to process recipes.  Safe process design requires knowledge of chemical reaction rates, character and energy release - all of which can be obtained from a low phi-factor adiabatic calorimeter such as the VSP2 (Vent Sizing Package 2) or ARSST (Advanced Reactive System Screening Tool).

 

Where Can I Learn More about Relief System Design and Vent Sizing?

Courses, handbooks and papers are available with a quick internet search. FAI provides courses, for example, either in our state-of-the-art lab setting or your location of choosing.  The next available course is: 

Relief System Design Course
May 15-16, 8 am to 4 pm, FAI Headquarters, 16w070 83rd Street, Burr Ridge (Chicago area), IL, CEUs: 1.6 (16 PDH)

Unlike other emergency vent sizing courses, this curriculum highlights simplified calculation methods capable of giving safe - but not overly conservative - relief system designs, with an emphasis on reactive chemistries and the role of two-phase flow.

Benchmarking of these methods will be illustrated with incidents and available plant data. Utilization of methods and equations will be demonstrated through practical design examples, covering vapor, gassy and hybrid systems.

Course Topics - Day 1

  • Introduction to Vent Sizing and Case Study
  • History of DIERS
  • Codes and Standards Explanation
  • Parameters Affecting Relief System Design/Fundamentals in Vent Sizing
  • Non-Reactive Fire Sizing
  • Vent Sizing Based on All Gas or Vapor Venting

Course Topics - Day 2

  • Discharge Coefficient Evaluation
  • Simplified Two-Phase Flow Methods for Vapor, Hybrid and Gassy Systems
  • Two-Phase Flow Through Relief System Design
  • Stable Relief Valve Sizing Operation
  • Containment and Disposal Considerations
Learning Outcomes
  • Understand up-to-date DIERS relief vent sizing methodologies and models, as well as the role of single and two-phase flow in venting behavior
  • Perform vent size calculations using the correct models and methodologies
  • Apply adiabatic calorimetry data
  • Be able to use hands-on techniques and “rules of thumb” to ensure that realistic vessel and vent size conditions are specified

For more information regarding relief valve sizing  and thermal hazards, contact thermalhazards@fauske.com  or, on the course, contact FAIUniversity@fauske.com or call 630-323-8750. 

 Emergency Relief Vent Sizing for Fire Emergencies Involving Liquid-Filled Atmospheric Storage Vessels

 

Topics: vent sizing, Two phase flow, ARSST, VSP2, DIERS, scale up, relief system, two-phase, adiabatic calorimeter, safe scale up, reactive chemistry, vsp, vent size calculation

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