Vent to Roof Rainwater Occlusion and Management

Abstract

Safety relief devices in a pharmaceutical manufacturing start-up were found to be occluded by rainwater. The number of times these vent lines were found to be occluded varied greatly and depended on weather conditions in the area. After analyzing all the available options, it was found that shifting the responsibility of maintaining these vent lines free of occlusion from the maintenance team to the operations team would decrease completely the chance of using these skids with occluded safety relief devices. Key Terms ⎯ pharmaceutical manufacturing, process safety, pressure relief device, engineering design.