Evaluation of Coordination of Emergency Response Team through the Social Network Analysis. Case Study: Oil and Gas Refinery

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study was to examine the cohesions status of the coordination within response teams in the emergency response team (ERT) in a refinery. METHODS: For this study, cohesion indicators of social network analysis (SNA; density, degree centrality, reciprocity, and transitivity) were utilized to examine the coordination of the response teams as a whole network. The ERT of this research, which was a case study, included seven teams consisting of 152 members. The required data were collected through structured interviews and were analyzed using the UCINET 6.0 Social Network Analysis Program. RESULTS: The results reported a relatively low number of triple connections, poor coordination with key members, and a high level of mutual relations in the network with low density, all implying that there were low cohesions of coordination in the ERT. CONCLUSION: The results showed that SNA provided a quantitative and logical approach for the examination of the coordination status among response teams and it also provided a main opportunity for managers and planners to have a clear understanding of the presented status. The research concluded that fundamental efforts were needed to improve the presented situations.

Study on the performance of wet electroscrubber in purifying airborne particles

In this study, an electroscrubber was designed and experimented for evaluation of integrating particle and droplet charging effects separately and jointly on collection efficiency of a spray tower and also to discover the optimal condition. A homogenous concentration of relatively fine particles was introduced to influent air stream and electroscrubber efficiency in purifying them was determined through the measurement of input and output particles concentration. The effect of various conditions such as particles and droplets charging alone and together [bipolar] for several applied voltages has been studied. In all of experiments, the applied charging voltage has a key role in promotion of electroscrubber efficiency. Maximum collection efficiency has achieved for 15 Kilovolt [Kv]. The effectiveness of bipolar charging of particles and droplets with 15 Kv was higher than that of no-charging and singly charging. In other words, efficiency can be increased from 84.43% to 93.22 for total particles and from 50.8% to 75.16% for submicron particles. The maximum improvement of collection efficiency [42.2%] relates to bipolar charging of the initial size group with diameter smaller than 0.3 micrometer [microm] and the minimum [0.5%] to sizing group of 11 with diameter 4-5 microm. This approach can be an appropriate option for the purpose of purifying submicron particles in spray tower scrubbers