Pharmaceuticals Sector Safety

Gexcon has extensive experience of working within the pharmaceutical industry and understanding its challenges. Chemical reactions involving toxic and flammable materials means that comprehensive and up-to-date safety assessments are essential.

Recognising the potential hazards due to both flammable vapours and dusts is key to understanding the risks associated with processing facilities.

Our expertise and appropriate use of specialist risk assessment and consequence modelling tools have earned us the trust of industry leaders in ensuring the safety of their facilities.

Dust Explosion Properties Testing

Gexcon offers a wide range of standardised tests for the determination of the ignition and explosion properties of dusts. Being aware of the properties of materials handled in your plant or used in your products will allow you to take the necessary safety precautions and to prevent explosions and reduce the consequences. Gexcon performs tests to determine the explosion characteristics…

Process Hazard Analysis (PHA)

Most industries work with potentially hazardous materials, either they are in the form of gases, liquids, or dust. Knowing how these materials are potentially harmful, it is an obligation for companies working with such materials to identify and evaluate the dangers involved.

Process Safety & Risk Management

Facilities, where complex industrial processes or hazardous materials such as flammable dust, gases, or liquids are involved, are always associated with hazards.

FLACS-CFD

Explosion & Dispersion Modelling Software. Our powerful industry-leading computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software simulates the dispersion of hazardous materials, fire and explosion with results that you can trust.

Incident Investigation

Over the last 40 years, Gexcon has been involved in the investigation of many high-profile accidents such as Buncefield, Piper Alpha, TWA 800, and the P-36 platform (Brazil). Leaders in the oil and gas industry and safety engineers at major hazard facilities have consistently sought the services of Gexcon to provide them with the expertise to assist in incident investigations.

Modelling Studies

Companies handling flammable and/or toxic materials are exposed to hazards during storage, transporting, and processing. As such, it is crucial to understand the consequences of a potential loss of containment of a hazardous event when performing a risk assessment.

FLACS-Frequency

A Web-Based Tool for Release Frequency Assessment. Accidental release of a flammable or toxic fluid is a key risk driver at many process facilities.

Expert Training

One of our core objectives is to improve the knowledge of others to ensure that lessons are learned from such incidents. Gexcon provides training across all levels to raise the competence of your staff from basic awareness training through to in-depth courses.

Shell FRED

FRED (Fire, Release, Explosion and Dispersion) is Shell’s consequence modelling tool, available exclusively through Gexcon.

Shell Shepherd

Shepherd is Shell’s quantitative risk analysis (QRA) tool, available exclusively through Gexcon.

Shell PIPA

PIPA is Shell’s Pre-Incident Planning tool, available exclusively through Gexcon.

FLACS-EFFECTS

A loss-of-containment scenario in the (petro)chemical industry can be devastating, for both property and human life. EFFECTS is easy-to-use, affordable software that helps safety professionals calculate and analyse the effects of these scenarios and develop the right prevention or containment protocols.

FLACS-RISKCURVES

Comprehensive quantitative risk analysis. The storage and transport of hazardous materials impose risks to the surrounding population and structures.

Regulatory Compliance

While the primary focus of any process safety plan should be to drive the risk to a level which is ‘As Low As Reasonably Practicable’ (ALARP) to protect people, the environment and business there are several regulatory requirements that must also be met to drive continual improvement.

Testing Facilities

Gexcon’s testing facilities are categorised according to the size of the testing: small, medium and large-scale testing facilities.

Testing of Passive Fire Protection

A fire accident in a workplace could potentially cause devastating losses. Loss of life, damage to the property and environmental harm as well as the financial cost can be extremely serious. Understanding how to avoid potential fire accidents and how to mitigate the consequences is essential.

Gas, Vapour and Liquid Explosion Properties Testing

The handling of gases, liquids and selected substances may constitute risks for explosions. Knowing the properties related to the risk of these materials, such as the ignition and explosion characteristics, is therefore essential. By being aware of the properties of materials handled in your plant or used in your products, it allows the necessary safety precautions to be taken to…

Explosion Mitigation System Testing

Gexcon’s testing sites in Norway are available for gas and dust explosion testing. These facilities are often used to test equipment designed to either withstand the impact of gas and/ or dust explosions or to protect against the consequences of such explosions.

Ignition Hazard Assessment for Mechanical Equipment and Protective Systems

A potentially explosive atmosphere exists when a mixture of air, gases, vapours, mists or dust combine in a way that can ignite under certain operating conditions. In this kind of atmosphere, special attention should be given to the equipment and protective systems that are being used for operational purposes as they might cause an explosion through friction, hot surfaces and…

Testing for Obtaining Transportation Classification

During the transportation of certain materials, several hazardous situations can occur. One of them is gas development due to the fact that transported goods may come into contact with water. The gas developed in most cases is hydrogen, which is highly explosive when mixed with air. Toxic gases may also develop. Therefore, a test method has been developed and described…

Research Projects

Gexcon has participated in various research projects throughout the years. Our expertise is particularly relevant in estimating and mitigating the consequences of major industrial accidents. Recent initiatives have focused on hazards associated with emerging technologies for conventional and renewable energy production, including hydrogen safety, biofuels, solar panel production, vapour cloud explosions (VCE), rapid phase transitions (RPT), production, storage and use…

Related Courses

Dust Explosion Hazards Course

Dust explosions still occur on a regular basis in the process industry causing injuries, fatalities, property damage, business interruption, and environmental pollution. This is in spite of the wealth and knowledge available to prevent the accident and to reduce the consequences to a minimum. In this two-day advanced course on dust and powder explosion hazards, you will learn all…

FLACS I Course

This course covers the standard modules in FLACS, such as geometry import and generation, gas dispersion, explosion, and fire, as well as liquid pool spread. It also comprises presentations on validations, explosion mitigation, QA and probabilistic risk analysis (Including a FLACS-Risk demonstration). This course combines theory, demonstrations, and practical exercises with FLACS software. Therefore, students will be required to practice…

Explosion Science Course

Gexcon has developed a unique training course for obtaining a full understanding of the phenomenon of explosions, including consequences, prevention techniques and current regulatory requirements for a safe and compliant working environment. The course covers gas and dust explosion theory, DSEAR (Dangerous Substances and Explosive Atmospheres Regulations) and ATEX regulations, ignition theory, hazardous area classification, risk assessment and protection concepts….

Pharmaceuticals

Related Products & Services