A Primer On Sis Understanding Process Safety Systems Design Data
A Primer On Sis Understanding Process Safety Systems Design Data
A Primer On Sis Understanding Process Safety Systems Design Data
by Mike Boudreaux
A Primer on SIS
Understanding Process Safety Systems Design
Mike Boudreaux is the DeltaV SIS product manager at Emerson Process Management in Austin, Texas. Prior to joining Emerson,
he previously filled various engineering, sales and marketing roles at AkzoNobel and Alcoa. While at AkzoNobel, Mr. Boudreaux
gained his experience specifying, designing and implementing safety instrumented systems. He earned a bachelors degree in
Chemical Engineering from the University of Houston and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern
University. He is a member of the ISA 84 functional safety standards committee and he is a co-chair for ISA 99 Working Group 7
on safety and security. Mr. Boudreaux can be reached at [email protected] or 512 832-3547.
Q: How did the concept of safety instrumented systems come
to be? How has SIS design strategy evolved since its inception
to where it stands now?
A: Industry incidents, such as those that have occurred in
Flixborough, England, Seveso, Italy, Bhopal, India, and
Pasadena, Texas, as well as others, have led to an increased
interest in process safety. Much of the focus has been to reduce
process risk through inherently safe design and independent layers of protection (IPL). Safety instrumented systems are one of
the many layers of protection that are used to deliver increased
process safety.
Modern safety instrumented systems are based on functional
safety design concepts that are provided by IEC 61508 and IEC
61511. Over the past 25 years, SIS design concepts have mirrored
process control system developments. Control systems have
evolved from pneumatics and hardwired panel boards to centralized DCSs to digital plant architectures. Similarly, SISs have progressed from relays and switches to PLCs with redundant architectures to logic solvers with advanced diagnostics capabilities.
SIS design has evolved from using rules of thumb and prescriptive requirements to designing safety loops based on the functional safety requirements of the process.
Q: From a general process safety perspective, why are safety
instrumented systems important? What capabilities do SISs
generally offer the end-user for process safety improvement?
A: When a process cannot practically be designed to be inherently
safe, an SIS can be used to reduce risks to an acceptable level. An
SIS can be designed to deliver a specified safety integrity level
(SIL) of risk reduction. IEC 61508 defines SIL 1 through SIL 4,
with each SIL designating a relative level of risk reduction provided
by a safety instrumented function (SIF) by an additional order of
magnitude.
Q: What role do standards play in the world of SIS? What
should end-users know about standards related to SIS?
A: The modern concept for SIS in the process industries is based
on IEC 61508 and IEC 61511. IEC 61508 is a generic functional
safety standard that can be applied across all industries. IEC
22 July 2009
q&a
forming this work are competent in the area of process safety systems design and, more specifically, SIF design and SIL verification.
Q: What are some key steps end-users should take to ensure
they are employing SIS in a way that will provide the most
benefit in terms of process safety?
Flow Control