Disarming a Manufacturing Batch Reactor

摘要

In February of 2010, the manufacturing team at Rohm and Haas’ Bayport, Texas, facility discovered that catalyst had inadvertently been omitted from a batch of hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA), resulting in the reactor holding almost 50,000 pounds of unreacted ethylene oxide (EO) and unreacted methacrylic acid (MAA) at elevated temperature. An emergency response team was quickly assembled, leading the plant to disarm the loaded reactor by safely venting most of the unreacted ethylene oxide through a water scrubber. Reactive Chemicals ARC testing helped determine the concentration of EO at which it was safe to add catalyst and react the remainder of the reactor batch. The subsequent Root Cause Investigation (RCI) revealed several opportunities to improve the process. This paper shares some key learnings from this event.