IMnI’s 2nd Safety Workshop

May 2-3, 2011

Eramet's Kvinesdal Alloy Plant -- Norway

An Executive Summary of the Best Practices Shared

Background

In 2009 the IMnI’s OHES Committee, with the support of the IMnI Board, agreed to launch a series of best practice-safety workshops with the aim of raising the bar on industry workers’ safety. The first workshop took place in the fall of 2010 at BHP Billiton’s TEMCO plant in Tasmania, Australia. The 2^nd, sponsored by Eramet and held on May 2-3 at Eramet’s plant in Kvinesdal, Norway was a resounding success. Over 20 delegates representing 9 different countries participated in the workshop. The theme: Liquid Metal Hazards and Water Risk in Engineering Processes.

The Workshop

Day 1: Tour of Eramet’s Kvinesdal alloy plant. Here, details on how the plant maximises safety, were showcased with 3 unique take home messages:

a) A clean and organised working environment improves workers’ safety

b) Energy used can be reused effectively – a financial and environmental benefit

c) Water used should be recycled when and where possible

Day 2: Eight presentations highlighting engineering and occupational health procedures sure to improve on safety

The workshop closed with a discussion session on the above mentioned theme with a focus on engineering process and occupational health. It is clear that the information shared and the topics discussed are crucial to the safety of the industry’s workers and certainly, participants gained new and invaluable knowledge on liquid metal, its characteristics and the hazards it poses from the standpoint of occupational health, safety and engineering. 

Major Points Raised during Discussion:

• There should be a change of direction on safety: move from reliance on BBS (Behaviour Based Safety) to MTO (Man, Technology and Organisation). The interactions between these MTO activities are vital as man can cause accidents, but can also prevent errors.
• The key is to prevent accidents and, if they occur, to minimise consequences. Hence barriers, physical, operational and, organisational should be put in place.
• Understand the basic physico-chemical characteristics of water and molten metal - a perfect combination for explosions.
• Risks in electric feed, raw materials, water cooling and poisonous gases should be understood.
• Increase the number of safety barriers, such as furnace containment pits, water leakage detection system, BURKER-type optical device that measures changes to water flow in the circuit (hence a possible leak), the use of Nitrogen gas regulatory system to detect cooling water levels, inspection by shift operators, relining of the furnace, H2 analysis…
• How to react and respond to an incident: process changes, training, PPE improvements, limit the number of people in high risk areas of the plant...
• Video type training was encouraged as it became clear that many workers could not read &so did not  understand their safety instructions.
• Safety statistics showed that workers who get hurt will likely get hurt again, and hence should be target subjects for training or if diagnosed to be clumsy should be re-allocated to other tasks.
• An industry safety index was proposed to allow benchmarking between member companies and industry.