The technology evening for August was presented by Lourens du Plessis, principal specialist for functional safety at Sasol. As defined in the IEC standards, there are four safety integrity levels (SIL 1-4). A higher SIL means a greater process hazard and thus a higher level of protection is required from the safety instrumented system (SIS).
Johan Maritz (left) thanks Lourens du Plessis after the presentation.
SISs are installed in process plants to mitigate hazards by taking the process to a ‘safe state’ when fixed set points have been exceeded, or when safe operating conditions have been violated.
SIL comes from two voluntary standards (IEC 61508 and IEC 61511) used by plant owners, operators, manufacturers and system designers to calculate safety performance requirements for hazardous operations.
Lourens took us through a very simple but very useful mathematical approach outlining the steps to be taken during a SIL calculation in order to understand the major variables and their impacts. The branch thanks Lourens for his informative and well received presentation.
In closure for the year, thank you to all our members and visitors who attended our technology events during 2018. Enjoy the festivities of the holiday season and come back safe in the new year.
Annual general meeting
All SAIMC members are invited to attend the branch AGM on Thursday 17 January 2019.
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