Divinycell International, Inc. - Executive Summary |
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Divinycell, International, (DIAB) DeSoto, Texas The DIAB facility is the leading industry in the manufacturing of rigid core PVC and Balsa products for lightweight sandwich technology. We remain committed to the Health and Safety to the employees, community and environment. Our company has an aggressive prevention and preventive maintenance program and policy. It is our policy that all Emergencies can be avoided by proper engineering of facilities and adequate training of all personnel in the proper operating procedures for facility equipment, processes and understanding of potential hazards. Although remote, the possibility of a facility-wide emergency does exist; Therefore, DIAB has developed an emergency action and prevention plan. The purpose of our plan is to establish responsibility for various functions involved in prevention and the handling of a facility emergency and outlines the proper procedures for handling emergency situations with the minimization of harm to faci lity personnel, equipment, the surrounding community, and the environment. The plan consists of three component segments: 1. Organization, Engineering, and Prevention This section provides information on measures to prevent or reduce the impact of an emergency at the facility. This section also provides information necessary to comply with Federal, State and local regulations for reporting release of hazardous materials. 2. Response Addresses procedures that apply in the event of a fire, explosion, hazardous gas/vapor release, hazardous material spill, injury to personnel or natural disaster. This section utilizes tables, flowcharts and checklists to provide an easy-to-use decision tool for personnel engaged in controlling and minimizing the adverse impact of an emergency. 3. Annexes Provides a means to update compliance issues, process changes, distribution and audits that are required by federal, state, and local regulations. The most important component of emergency planning at DIAB is prevention. Preventive measures range from employee training and facility inspection programs to engineering design of hazardous processes. Recognizing that some spills are inevitable, an extensive process haszard analysis produced the following two (2) worst-case scenarios. Scenario 1 A 12" x .25" gasket/seal rupture from the Toluene Diisocyanate tank manway would be contained in the facilities secondary containment enclosure with an average sustained release rate of .557 pounds/min with a total release of 15.4 pounds. The chemical released as a liquid and formed an evaporation puddle. This was a point source release and did not affect surrounding receptors. The guidlines for safe handling and disposal provided by the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) were used for mitigation. Scenario 2 A 2" diameter opening from a tranfer hose rupture at the transportation vessel sustained a release rate of .449 pounds/min with a total of 14.7 pounds of TDI before the manual truck vessel vavle was closed. The maximum downwind threat zone for level of concern or 2.5 ppm was 23 yards. The company's emergency action plan would be activated and the fire department summoned. All surrounding receptors would be notified of the appropriate actions to take as requied. The puddle would be contained by berms and form an evaporation puddle. The guidlines for safe handling and disposal provided by the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) would again be used for mitigation. Our five year history has had no reportable spills. We have examined alternative material uses through research and developement and plans include changes for TDI to MDI within the next year. |