Practicality of Implementing Risk Based Protection System Design to Vendor Packages in The Petrochemical Industry

This paper looks at the implementation of the standards relating to IEC 61508 electrical / electronic / programmable electronic safety related systems (referred to as E/E/PES), parts 1-7, for the design of the vendor safety instrumented systems. Vendor packages are essential and integral to petrochemical plants; however there has been a slow transition within the industry in terms of implementing these standards. This paper will attempt to address the following points, concerning the application of the safety standards; 1) Definition of a vendor package 2) Traditional instrumented design for vendor safety systems 3) Introduction of safety governance standards 4) Application of the risk based approach 5) An example of the application of IEC 61508 on major vendor packages 6) Assessment of safety functions 7) Implementation of safety integrity levels 8) Example of SIL implementation within a vendor package 9) Dealing with purely economic integrity levels 10) Cost benefit analysis.