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Taking credit for planned and unplanned shutdowns to help meet a SIL target
The previous options for increasing a SIF’s calculated performance target would all come with a set of
advantages and disadvantages. The author would like to suggest an additional option which has many
advantages and few disadvantages. The concept is taking credit in the SIL verification calculation for a
planned or unplanned shutdown which has the opportunity to mainly test the final elements, but may
also be implemented to test sensors (for example, low flow could be proven on a shutdown).
They way this works is twofold. First, determine the frequency of a shutdown, and then apply credit for
the shutdown (which includes design and operation requirements). To determine the frequency of a
shutdown, the analyst would have to have knowledge of the plant’s operating history. A unit may
shutdown frequently due factors such as a high number of unplanned spurious trips, planned outages
for cleaning, or the process may be a batch operation. A good practice would be to capture this
information up front during the LOPA. The LOPA team might mention that the plant trips a certain
number of times per year. If the SIF design engineer followed up on this information, the engineer might
discover that the final elements he/she wishes to utilize in the SIF are being actuated as part of the
shutdown process. Another clue could be if a LOPA took a “time at risk” type conditional modifier credit
in the SIF’s LOPA scenario. This could let the engineer know the process is only a hazard for a certain
percentage of the year. In other words, the process comes down at a certain frequency for a certain
duration. In any case, the design engineer ought to verify with operations any assumed shutdown
frequencies prior to taking credit for a shutdown in the SIL verification calculations.
Once a shutdown frequency has been established, the next step would be to apply this shutdown event
as a “credit” in the SIL verification calculation. One method would be to apply a diagnostic credit to the
calculation. For example, a process operates in a batch mode where reactor feed valves are opened and
closed during each batch. The frequency of batch runs could be up to a few times a week. If the SIF
needed to close the same reactor feed valves in the case of a demand (e.g., a runaway reaction), the SIF
design engineer could apply a “diagnostic credit” (further described in the following sections) to the
valves because they are being opened and closed at least weekly due to normal operations.
It should be noted that this method of taking a diagnostic credit from a trip is assumed to not satisfy the
requirements of a full proof test. This is simply a credit applied to the SIL verification calculation due to
the proving of selected SIF elements. In other words, a full proof test would still be required at some
point indicated in the Safety Requirements Specification (SRS). Further note, this is considered a
diagnostic test of the selected SIF elements because the trip which is credited is not considered to be a
demand on the SIF. In other words, the SIF demand rate should be less frequent than the process
shutdown interval in order to justify taking a credit in the first place. During a non‐SIF demand trip of the
[…]”
These references can give an idea as to the appropriate levels of diagnostic credit capable; however
team analysis should be conducted in order to quantify or qualify the numbers used.
Summary of determining diagnostic credit
The preceding section listed out various standard references and an example of one method of
determining diagnostic coverage. Note that there are many requirements listed in IEC 61508‐2 in
regards to diagnostic coverage; the example above only listed a handful of requirements. Furthermore,
note that IEC 61508‐6 Annex C shows an example of an FMEDA and application on the tables in IEC
61508‐2 Annex A towards diagnostic coverage.
Performing a full FMEDA is probably the most thorough method, yet such a method may be time
consuming and would require intimate knowledge of the device and all of its failure modes. Some data
Figure 1: Initial PFDavg valve calculation
These results were taken back to the client team, and discussions turned to inquiring about unit
shutdowns which might be occurring where the team could apply diagnostic credit for valve actuation.
The team had previously mentioned that the reactor had a tendency to plug due to salt deposits and as
such, needed to be flushed and cleaned routinely. It turned out that the reactor was shut down at least
every 6 months in order to do a full cleaning of the equipment for de‐salting. Once this was determined,
the team agreed to utilize a diagnostic credit for these planned shutdowns since the reactor feeds would
need to be shut down every 6 months for the same cleaning.
To determine the amount of credit achievable for a full stroke of the valves, the team chose to turn to a
qualitative approach. Partial stroke test failure rate data was known for the generic devices modeled in
the SIL verification calculation, but not full stroke diagnostic data. The design team qualitatively
concluded that a monitored full stroke of the valves should reveal at least as many failures as a partial
stroke test. Therefore the team applied the same amount of diagnostic credit to the 6 month shutdown
as would be applied from a partial stroke test. This diagnostic credit was applied to the SIL verification
calculation and factored into the SIL verification calculation as detecting around 50% of all undetected
Figure 2: Final PFDavg valve calculation (with diagnostic credit)
In order to put it all together, the design team called out that whenever the SIF valves were tripped for
any reason, the SIS would begin monitoring of the final element output states (flow, and/ or valve
position) as soon as the SIS commanded the SIF valves to close (which occurred for any shutdown). The
responses would be timed such that if the desired response was not reached within the time limit, an
alarm would be generated to inform operations of a dangerous detected failure of the SIF final
elements. Since the plant did not previously have an SIS, there was a need to change the Distributed
Control System (DCS) programming for unit shutdown. It was modified such that the shutdown process
would allow the SIS shutdown valves adequate time to actuate first and be monitored for success,
before the control valves actuated. If everything shut at the same time the risk was the SIS shutdown
valve monitoring would be un‐specific and thus the assumed diagnostic credit would not be appropriate.