Intelligent Robotic Palletizer System

In the global wave of automation, logistics and manufacturing are indispensable and important industries. Among them, the related automatic warehousing system is even more urgently needed. There are quite a few cases of using robotic arms in the current industry cargo stacking operations. Traditional operations require engineers to plan the stacking path for the robotic arm. If the size of the object changes, it will take extra time to re-plan the work path. Therefore, in recent years, quite a lot of automatic palletizing software has been developed; however, none of it has a detection mechanism for stacking correctness and personnel safety. As a result, in this research, an intelligent robotic palletizer system is developed based on a self-developed symmetrical algorithm to stack the goods in a staggered arrangement to ensure the overall structure. Innovatively, it is proposed to check the arrangement status and warnings during the visual stack inspection to ensure the correctness of the stacking process. Besides, an AI algorithm is imported to ensure that personnel cannot enter the set dangerous area during the work of the robotic arm to improve safety during stacking. In addition to uploading the relevant data to the cloud database in real time, the stacking process combined database and vision system also provide users with real-time monitoring of system information.

Study on the Law of Harmful Gas Release from Limnoperna fortunei (Dunker 1857) during Maintenance Period of Water Tunnel Based on K-Means Outlier Treatment

It is of great significance for air pollution control and personnel safety guarantee to master the release characteristics of harmful gases in the process of Limnoperna fortunei corruption. In view of the lack of research on the environmental pollution caused by the corruption of Limnoperna fortunei, a model experiment was designed to study the three harmful gases of NH3, H2S, and CH4 in the putrid process of Limnoperna fortunei by considering the density of Limnoperna fortunei and the time of leaving water. The results show that: (1) The recognition and processing of outliers based on wavelet decomposition and K-means algorithm can effectively reduce the standard deviation and coefficient of variation of the data set and improve the accuracy of the data set. (2) The variation of NH3 and H2S gas concentrations with the time of water separation satisfies polynomial linear regression (R2 > 99%). (3) At a density of 0.5–7.0 × 104 mussels/m2, the highest concentration of NH3 reached 47.9777–307.9454 mg/m3 with the increase in the density of Limnoperna fortunei and the extension of the time away from water, far exceeding the occupational exposure limit of NH3 of 30 mg/m3, potentially threatening human health and safety. The highest detection value of H2S concentration is 0.1909–5.0946 mg/m3, and the highest detection concentration of CH4 is 0.02%, both of which can be ignored.

The Impact of Organizational Culture on Safety-conscious Considering the Mediating Role of Employees' Job Satisfaction: A Case Study

Background: Employees' awareness about safety is a required element to develop a safe behavior so that it allows designing programs to improve safety performance at work. Therefore, the present study attempts to examine the effects of organizational culture on personal safety level with employees' satisfaction as a mediation variable. Methods: This descriptive-analytical and cross-sectional study was conducted with 229 steel industry workers using a standard questionnaire. The questionnaire had 47 items arranged in two sections, including demographics and job information as section one and organizational culture, personnel safety awareness, and employees' satisfaction as section two. Data analyses were done using SPSS and LISREL, and the relationships between the variables were determined using a structural equations model. Results: The mean score of satisfaction and personnel safety awareness was equal to 54.58 and 8.65, respectively. The highest mean score of organizational culture dimensions was obtained for patriarchy vs. matriarchy (33.2), and the lowest mean score was obtained for individualism vs. collectivism (16.08). Organizational culture was notably and positively affected by individualism vs. collectivism, avoiding uncertainty, and distance from power. In addition, there was a significant relationship between the total mean score of the dimensions of the organizational culture questionnaire and work wards (P<0.001). Conclusion: The study showed that organizational culture has a direct relationship with personnel safety awareness and job satisfaction. These results point out that the human factor has the most important role in preventing occupational accidents. Accordingly, businesses and employers should establish and disseminate organizational culture in their organizations.

Green Fluid Technology: How Food Wastes Can Revolutionize the Oil and Gas Industry

Some conventional drilling fluid additives utilized to adjust drilling fluid properties can lead to many issues related to personnel safety and the environment. Thus, there is a need for alternative materials that have less impact on personnel safety and the environment. Many researchers have begun to investigate new alternatives, one example is food wastes. Due to their eco-friendly properties and their vast availability, food wastes are a good candidate that can be exploited as drilling fluid additives. In this work, five different concentrations of eggshells powder (ESP) were added to a reference fluid and the mud weight was measured using mud balance to understand the effects of ESP on mud weight. The results were compared with five concentrations of two commonly used drilling fluid additives - calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and barite. The findings showed that the drilling fluid blends with ESP have significantly outperformed the drilling fluid blends with barite and CaCO3 and for all concentrations in terms of mud weight improvement. The second best blends in terms of mud weight enhancement were the blends with barite and followed by the blends CaCO3. In conclusion, food waste material - ESP outperforming two of the most common drilling fluid additives shows a potential for ESP and other food wastes to be utilized as drilling mud additives in the petroleum industry. This will reduce the harmful chemicals disposed to the environment, reduce exposure risks of drilling crews to harmful chemicals, minimize drilling fluid cost, and revolutionize the industry while contributing to the economy overall.

Turnaround Procedures to Ensure Personnel Safety During Covid-19: Best Practices and Case Study

As industry returns to work and restarts planning and execution of turnarounds and other maintenance projects, there will be regulatory, corporate and social responsibilities in order to safely restart and sustain activities. Major maintenance events and projects already bring complex challenges as multiple activities are carried out by numerous personnel and contractors, in a short duration of time. This risk is further amplified with the additional restrictions, challenges and complications posed by COVID-19. The key challenge for turnaround managers in current times is to ensure the safety of their personnel while delivering a successful turnaround. Through a detailed analysis and breakdown of the various stages of a turnaround, this paper attempts to answer one core question- How do you keep onsite personnel safe during turnarounds in the COVID-19 era? United Safety has developed a series of planning and prevention tools to help projects identify and implement robust actions that prevent the spread of COVID-19 onsite. These steps have been successfully implemented on site during a turnaround for a major Client in Canada. From additional precautions to new operating procedures, modifications were made at various stages including pre-planning, during the turnaround and post-turnaround stage to ensure the safety of onsite personnel. The result was an incident-free turnaround with zero recorded transmissions on site and a comprehensive COVID-19 Turnaround Response Plan.

Study on Hazardous Areas of Hydrogen Fluoride Diffusion Based on CFD Simulation

Hydrogen fluoride (HF) is a typical dangerous gas in the fluorine chemical industry. Its leakage is one of the most common types of accidents in this industry, and it poses a serious threat to personnel safety and health, environmental sanitation, and social stability. In this paper, the process and consequences of an HF leakage accident in a fluorine chemical plant were simulated by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software, and hazardous areas (lethal area, severe injury area, light injury area, and maximum allowable concentration area) of HF diffusion were determined according to the HF concentration corresponding to the degree of personal injury. Moreover, the effects of wind speed and height on hazardous areas were analyzed. The research results of this paper provide model support for similar enterprises to predict the consequences of harmful gas leakage accidents, and give suggestions on emergency evacuation and rescue work, which have practical application significance.

Risk Assessment and Analysis in Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) Hazards of Bitumenous Waterproofing Industry Using HAZID Technique

Today, the use of risk assessment methods in various industries is expanding so that there are currently more than 70 types of different risk assessment methods in the world. These methods are usually used to identify, control and reduce the consequences of risks. The main methods of risk assessment are appropriate methods for risk assessment and their results can be used for management and decision-making to control and reduce its consequences. The purpose of this study is to identify and evaluate the risks to safety, health and the environment and to provide proposed and corrective solutions to reduce or eliminate HSE risks using the HAZID method. This descriptive cross-sectional study was performed for 4 months to identify the risks. For this purpose, a list of possible safety, health and environmental risks was prepared and the risk was evaluated by HAZID technique. In total, 5.15% of the identified risks are unacceptable, 20.62% are undesirable, 50.51% are acceptable, but 23.72% of the need for revision is minor. The results of this research include the implementation of measures such as safety training - professional training - inspection monitoring system - personnel safety management - preventive maintenance system management and forming a safety audit team - establishing regular House Keeping programs, etc. in identifying and Controls identified risks.