In today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, Mohammad Saim, CEO and Lead Consultant at Shepherd Risk based out of Karachi, Pakistan, talks about the current status of dust explosion safety in Pakistan.
Mohammad has more than 20 years of experience in the oil and gas and energy sectors. He specializes in qualitative and quantitative risk assessment, consequence modelling, SIL assessments and verification studies, fire protection design, and emergency response planning. He has an extensive background in many forms of hazard analysis, including bow tie, HAZOP, HAZID, LOPA and many others, in industries handling combustible gases, combustible liquids and also combustible dust.
This episode specifically came on the back of a Dust Safety Professionals ticket from a coal power plant in Pakistan. The Health & Safety manager there had reached out and asked if we knew of anyone that had any experience doing audits and assessments and training at facilities that are handling combustible dust. When we met Mohammad soon after, we connected him with this manager. Now he shares his expertise on the podcast.
The Current Status of Fire and Explosion Safety Regulations in Pakistan: an Overview
“Being a developing country, we do not have very detailed or elaborate regulations,” Muhammad says. “But the convention in our country is that almost all the organizations follow either the US regulations, NFPA or the EU regulations. Mostly it’s all about NFPA, API and the practices. But the catch here is that almost all legal power plants which are being developed or which are being operated are all Chinese-built and some are owned by the Chinese. So they follow the Chinese standards, as they call them. So the standards are more or less a reflection of NFPA. So they are just like a duplicate of NFPA, and in some cases some are different.”
For an auditor or the assessor, it can be challenging if facilities are following too many different sets of internal standards, especially if no standards or practices are specified in the contract as mandatory. People come up with ways to shortcut or avoid some of the expensive-to-implement items in the NFPA and API guidelines.
“So it’s very difficult,” Muhammad admits. “When we were building the coal power plants 10 years, there was a lack of knowledge on coal dust altogether in the country. We didn’t talk like this was the most critical factor in coal power plants’ safety. We were focused on conventional issues.”
What Are the Current Combustible Dust Challenges?
Dust hazards are not recognized as well in Pakistan, especially in coal power plants because they are considered more of a housekeeping issue than a safety issue.
“There are documented things that we need to have like zoning,” Muhammad says. “So that’s the conventional thing that is done, and that’s fine. But recognizing that this is a very, very serious threat to the integrity of the installation and the safety of the people is low.”
Expertise on combustible dust hazards is also a challenge.
“Some senior managers of power plants have contacted me. They are looking for experts in dust process safety. I’m more into process safety or technical safety in gas and oil or chemicals, but not in dust. Unless we have these competency issues resolved, we may not solve the other technical issues because someone needs to be on top of the hazard and someone needs to be an expert in hazard recognition and in solving these issues, not just by saying “Okay, just go to NFPA or go to IEC.” That’s not going to solve the issue, that’s just the compliance part. Where we are, we are not too good.”
Muhammad acknowledged that difficulties exist with EX matters. During the design, engineering and procurement phase of a project, certain things are overlooked.
“Even if you buy the right equipment item, we need to operate and maintain it for the next 10, 20 or 30 years. Are we having the right competencies, are we having the right tools and techniques in our organization to run this equipment in a zero condition for 30 years? So there is a crisis in this field. We do not have the competencies at par with what is needed.”
Muhammad and his colleagues have been working with a Canadian EX expert who has been travelling to Pakistan to create a lot of awareness there. He meets with various companies to provide guidance that can reduce the frequency of combustible dust incidents in the country’s coal power plants.
“We’ve been trying to build this awareness that EX is not everybody’s job,” Muhammad explains. “We need EX-competent people. So that is one of the key weaknesses that are common and widespread. In terms of process safety, we tend to ignore dust as a special focus area: [we just think] ‘Okay, fine, that’s one of the hazards.’ But other than saying dust is a major hazard, we need specialists and we need competency build-up for dust explosion hazard.”
What Can We Do as a Global Community to Improve Safety?
Muhammad applauded the fact that knowledge sharing is so easy these days. He has been communicating with EX experts like Mike Marrington from Houston, Texas, about spreading awareness in coal power plants.
“These interactions are actually very, very helpful. I also believe that these platforms, especially LinkedIn, provide a lot of knowledge when people interact with each other about where the gaps are and which gaps they need to fill in.”
He also encouraged online learning like webinars.
“Travel costs or other costs are not incurred in a webinar which takes an hour and engages all the communities: Process, Process Safety, Maintenance, Operations. During Covid, I learned about the value of webinars. Prior to that, it was considered ineffective. As a result of Covid, we had to adapt to webinars and online sessions. So they are very valuable. No cost is involved: you just need to gather people just to engage with the experts.”
Conclusion
At the end, Muhammad said that for a long time, many countries, especially America and Europe, started abandoning coal power plants. This trend creates additional concerns.
“When you abandon a whole field, like coal power plants, you lose the experts. Most of the expertise on sciences comes from either Europe or America. So when they lost interest in coal, [perhaps] they lost interest in developing dust explosion [research], especially the coal dust explosion… My personal opinion is that the sharing frequency or the sharing potency dropped down because Europe lost its interest in coal. Americans are not into coal development so they lost interest in dust explosions as well.”
Such gaps in knowledge can be dangerous. Reducing the number of combustible dust incidents can only be done through continuous education and awareness, and as long as a hazard exists, knowledge delivery should never be interrupted.
If you would like to discuss further, leave your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach Muhammad Saim directly:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/muhammad-saim-890ab134/
Website: http://www.shepherdrisk.com/
Email: [email protected]
If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode.
Resources mentioned
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Dust Safety Share
Companies
Shepherd Risk
Incidents
Explosion at Pakistan Coal-Powered Plant Injures at Least Five People
Video of Pakistan Coal-Powder Plant Explosion
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