About Polyolefins UK
Basell Polyolefins is a joint venture between BASF and Royal Dutch Shell and, as a U.S owned company, has global standards for electrical safety which includes a requirement for arc flash risk assessments at all manufacturing facilities. Basell is one of the world’s largest producers of polypropylene and advanced polyolefins products.
Requirements
Electrical Safety (UK) were contracted to undertake an arc flash risk assessment study to IEEE 1584 and also carry out awareness training to staff and any contractors for both their Carrington and Milton Keynes sites. Due to the high degree of symmetry on the Carrington site, it was proposed by ESUK that a pilot study on the 11kV switchboards, transformers and 1st tier LV primary switchboards would give valuable information to the engineering team about the arc flash severity levels throughout the facility, at a fraction of the cost for a full study.
Approach
Site provided hard and soft copy diagrams and documentation relevant to the work requirement and following evaluation of the data by ESUK, an accurate proposal was submitted for approval. From data supplied and physical data collected by ESUK engineers, data sheets were completed along with a single line drawing in SKM software. A full report was produced which detailed arc flash incident energy, flash protection boundaries, shock protection boundaries, fault levels to IEC60909 and label requirements that were European compliant. The report was backed by mitigation strategies and tailored to meet Basell Polyolefins requirements on working distances and working arrangements. Once the report was completed, meetings were held with Andy Beaumont and his engineering team at which strategies for risk elimination and reduction were discussed and agreed. Bespoke site training sessions were delivered by ESUK to all engineering staff, detailing arc flash awareness, risk assessments, avoidance and reduction
Andy Beaumont, Senior Electrical Engineer for Basell Polyolefins said;
“The knowledge and experience at ESUK proved invaluable in determining our levels of risk, Mike Frain and his team showed professionalism and delivered an accurate and on time arc flash study”
