Editorial

The recent seminar on ‘Safety, Health & Environment Management in Indian Chemical Industry’ was a resounding success from every angle. There was a good turn out of delegates, several of them from outside Mumbai. Industry contributed handsomely towards sponsorship of the event. The need for self-regulation by industry was repeatedly stressed at the seminar. For self-regulation to succeed awareness and education are crucial. IIChE can perhaps act as a catalyst for this by providing a platform for increasing awareness and continuing education on HSE issues. There is a distinct vacuum when it comes to formal courses on HSE and IIChE could step in to fill this. Let us have a debate on this, and comments are invited from everyone.

In the September issue of this Newsletter, I had mentioned about taking up the task of compiling a database of members of the Mumbai Regional Centre. Sad to say that not even two hands are required to count the number of responses received so far. The advantages of such a database are many and too obvious to be stated here. Suffice to say that in the post-WTO era, such professional rosters will become very significant. I once again appeal to all the members to e-mail their particulars in the following format: Name, Membership No., Organisation, Designation, Contact details (postal address, telephone, e-mail), area of special interest / expertise. The target for compiling this database is June 2003. Please help us to make this happen.

You will be pleased to note that the seminar on ‘Safety, Health & Environment Management in Indian Chemical Industry’ ON 11^th January at ITC Grand Maratha Sheraton was very successful. The programme was sponsored by Reliance Industries limited and ICICI Bank Ltd. We are indeed obliged to them as well as to the co-sponsors - Mangalore Refineries and Petrochemicals, Bharat Petroleum, Hindustan Petroleum and Essar Oil.

The report prepared by KPMG and presented during the CHEMTECH seminar last week expects the Chemical Industry to grow from 28 billion US $ to 100 billion US $ by 2010 instead of 68 billion US $ predicted earlier. The report expects multifold growth of Pharma and Biotech industries and moderate growth for Basic Chemical Industry. It is hoped that some growth is visible in the near future.

Indian Chemical Manufacturers Association recently held the awards function, wherein awards were presented to Grasim Industries, Nagda besides others. Mr.L.Mansingh, Director-General Foreign trade, who was the Chief Guest, committed to look into the grievances of the industry.

Chemtech Foundation promoted by Mr. Jasu Shah has been doing yeomen service by holding annual seminars and exhibitions for last 28 years. Seminars held from 22^nd to 26^th January had Chemtech, Pharmatech, Biotech, Envirotech and Powertech. ‘Hall of Fame’ award was presented to Dr.Homi Sethna, former Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission and Honorary Fellow of IIChE. Besides the ‘Achiever of the Year’ award winners were Mr.K.Venkataramanan of L&T, Dr.Rama Iyer of Kvaerner Powergas, Mr.Ashwin Dani of Asian Paints, Dr.A.V.Rama Rao, former Director of Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Dr.Sivaraman of NCL, and. Dr.Paul Ratnaswamy, former Director, NCL. Mumbai Regional Centre of IIChE congratulates them for their achievement and special congratulations to Mr..Jasu Shah for promoting the cause of Chemical Engineering and Chemical Industry.

D.P.Misra

On January 11^th, 2003 the Mumbai Regional Centre (MRC) of Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers organised a Seminar on Safety, Health and Environment Management in Indian Chemical Industry at Hotel Grand Maratha Sheraton. As per the annual plans of the MRC for 2002-2003, this program was scheduled for Nov.30, 2002and was meant to promote Safety and Responsible Care among the technical personnel of Small and Medium Scale Industries. At the time of actualising the plans Chairman of the Centre Mr.D.P.Misra mandated that it has to be impact making both as continuing education program and Resource Generator for providing greater value addition to IIChE members of the centre in the immediate future. In the light of the more ambitious target the Symposium was rescheduled to provide time for meticulous planning of structuring, contents, faculty and venue. Naturally a very successful performance was expected. Amazingly, reality very much exceeded even the optimistic expectation. This elaborate reporting is aimed at repeating such successes. Every member of the executive Committee was involved in regular review of progress in plans apart from shouldering individually assigned tasks, which he had full freedom to organise and execute. Communication through e-mail provided prompt interventions for crises resolution with no need for fire fighting exercises.

The Objective of the programme was to provide the participants an exposure to the management sequence of Cradle to Grave Care of Chemical Manufacturing. The Integrated Management of HSE concerns all phases of the Plant’s life Cycle –Viz. Conceptual Design, Plant Design, Engineering and Construction, Start up, Operations and Maintenance, Modifications, Shut down/decommissioning to demolition.

Befitting the theme of Safety and Environment, the inauguration by Mr.K.C.Gupta, Director-General, National Safety Council was by lighting Electronic Lamps. His address ‘Societal & Regulatory Expectations’ called for self-regulation of HSE issues and to also include risk reduction beyond factory fence, in transportation and household. Mr. John Knott MD, Jacobs H&G Ltd. in his Keynote Address brought out the importance of safety in executing projects where a large number of people belonging to several contractors work with heavy machinery and at heights. HSE practices of Contractor should be a key parameter in bid evaluation rather than the traditional practice of going by lowest bidder. Systems and values of Engineering Design and Construction organisations must have HSE on par with profit objective to avoid pain of accidents and attendant liabilities. Prof. G.D. Yadav spoke on Designing Greener and Safer Chemicals for the protection of Environment and Health. This novel approach to intrinsically safer products in contrast to the much-hackneyed intrinsically safer processes was well received by the participants. To meet the Challenge of POP regime he proposed Retro metabolic (Soft Chemical) design of a safer analogue of DDT.

An Approach to Intrinsically Safe Chemical Plants was the theme of the first lecture by Dr.P.K.Ghosh of the first session devoted to Safety. The session was chaired by the very successful veteran of Concept to Conception, Commissioning and Consolidation of mega plants Mr.B.Narayan Sr.Executive VP Reliance Industries. Dr.Sriram provided fresh look to Management of Change in his lecture on this topic. Emergency Shutdown and ShutDown Maintenance was covered by Mr.V.R.Kulkarni of Reliance Industries. Responsible Care topics were covered by three of the faculty who at various points of time lead the initiative for ICMA.

The Second session on Environment was chaired by Mr.Hiremath CMD, Heavy Water Board who has developed the H2S exchange based process and plant for Heavy water production which required ‘Zero defect’ management of HSE issues related to the highly toxic H2S gas. Industrial Wastewater Management - Policy and Implementation by Dr.Deepak Kantawala was full of insight. Substituting drinking water as the rinsing medium for ice-cream production equipment and limiting the quantity used rendered it useful as milk shake for distribution to its employees, thus sparing capacity of effluent treatment plant for increased production. Alternative Technologies and In-plant control for pollution prevention was the subject dealt by Prof.Shyam Asolekar. .Dr.Hazra spoke on extending of Responsible Care Guiding Principles to include Sustainability. This is in line with the various currently promoted voluntary initiatives in other sectors. Final lecture in the session was by Mr.Girish Mahajan of ICICI who introduced the various grants and soft loans available for environmental improvement projects.

The Valedictory Session chaired by MRC chairman Mr. Misra was aimed at getting the answer to how we should proceed further based on the earlier deliberations. Most of the participants in this open session advocated for voluntary action for continuous improvement. What are the drivers for such choices? How to manage to avoid the pitfall of lowest bid selection for project contracting by two tier bidding to eliminate distortions due to poor level playing in HSE parameters was one of the outcomes. The presentations of Dr.Sagne and Dr Hazra and Dr.Badarinarayana evoked interest in adopting Responsible Care. Some of the participants sought prescription on whether to go for the latest approach of ACC of USA and RCMS of CIA or as practised in rest of the 45 countries where RC initiative is in operation.

This show of enthusiasm is encouraging for revitalising RC movement in the country, which has in the recent past remained stagnant if not actually declined. It is difficult to gauge as to how far these new found advocates would institutionalise it and sustain it in their organisation

The number of participants at the seminar was approximately 120.

Dr. M.C.Badarinarayana

Delivered by

President(Operations) & Member of the Board, Larsen & Toubro Limited

on

PROFILE OF Mr. K. VENKATARAMANAN

Mr. K. Venkataramanan is Member of the Board & President (Operations), Larsen & Toubro Limited, Mumbai. He is incharge of the company’s E&C Division which caters to turnkey projects in the sectors of Cement & Minerals, Chemical Plant & Systems, Oil & Gas (onshore/offshore), Hydrocarbons, Fertilizer, Petrochemicals, Food Processing and Power Plants.

He is a Chemical Engineer from IIT Delhi with specialization abroad in Design and Engineering and has a wide exposure to activities of International Companies.

As a whole time Director on the Board, he is involved in policies and strategy formulation, project L&T’s capability to external stakeholders, business community and society, liaison with Govt. agencies at Ministerial level for policies affecting L&T.

Mr. Venkataramanan is actively associated with various professional bodies including Confederation of Indian Industries, Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers, Chemtech Foundation and Bombay Chamber of Commerce & Industries.

Mr. Venkataramanan has contributed a number of technical papers in National and International Technical Conferences and received awards from Industry associations.

The prestigious " V.V Mariwala Visiting Professor in Chemical Engineering Endowment " for the year 2002-2003 has been conferred on Mr K.Venkataramanan, President (Operations).

The Davidson Frame Award 2002 for Strengthening Project Management Profession in India and abroad has also been conferred on Mr. K. Venkataramanan for his active creation of the certification scheme based on level D of International Project Management Association, (IPMA) Switzerland within L&T group of companies.

Mr. Venkataramanan is widely travelled, has diverse interests and is a keen sportsman.

Website of the Month

This month’s website www.membraneonline.com , is a repository of information on membranes and membrane technology. The information is categorised in a easy to use format under News, Articles, Glossary, Companies, Research Groups, Societies, Conferences, Books and Software. The site has a fine collection of articles on membrane filtration and its applications. The links to membrane suppliers is through products and application types.

Send your feedback on this and the Newsletter in general to secretary@iichemrc.org. Of course do keep visiting www.iichemrc.org for the MRC news and www.iiche.org.in for the news from the IIChE Headquarters.

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