Friendly Ice Cream Corporation - Wilbraham - Executive Summary |
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Friendly Ice Cream Corporation manufactures its own ice cream products for over 640 company owned restaurants, over 40 franchised restaurants and over 5,000 retail outlets. The manufacturing operation, based in Wilbraham MA, includes an anhydrous ammonia based refrigeration plant which serves both processing and cold storage warehousing operations. Because Friendly Ice Cream Corporation has roughly 40,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia on site, OSHA's Process Safety Management of Highly Hazardous Chemicals (29CFR 1910.119) and Environmental Protection Agency's Risk Management Program (40CFR Part 68) apply to the Wilbraham facility. Friendly Ice Cream Corporation is committed to preventing a release of anhydrous ammonia that could result in injury to the employees, the public, or the environment. Although the company's safety performance with anhydrous ammonia has been excellent, it is committed to further improving the facility and applicable programs addressing safe storage, use and handling of the refrigerant. Included in this submittal are the company's five year accident history regarding anhydrous ammonia, its emergency response plan, existing safety systems, and planned improvements. Also included are both the worst case and alternative release scenarios modeling off-site impact to residential, public, industrial/commercial, and environmental receptors. Both scenarios were developed using OCA, RMP*Comp, and USGS guidance. In the worst case scenario, a portion of the refrigeration system containing 30,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia suffers a major release, due to catastrophic failure of a large outside storage vessel. Although the tank is diked, which would effect the passive mitigation, it was not considered in the worst case expansion of the vapor cloud as it was released into the surrounding urban area traveling a distance offsite to 1.5 miles to the toxic endpoint. Although the system also includes emergency shutoff valves, which would limit the rel ease, their effects were not considered for this scenario either. The alternative release scenario involves a valve component failure on the high pressure side of the ammonia system. A one-hour leak would release approximately 381 pounds of refrigerant before active mitigation by the onsite response team using remote emergency valves. This release would result in an offsite impact of 0.10 miles to the toxic endpoint. Friendly Ice Cream Corporation considers the actual occurrence of any offsite release to be highly unlikely. This is due to the company's strong commitment to Process Safety and Industry Standard Operating Procedures, and its use of modern tools such as state of the art process safety controls and computerized preventative maintenance programs. |