Norton H. Walton/Russell L. Miller Award

    This year, the Safety and Health Division of AIChE presents the Norton H. Walton / Russell L. Miller award to Mr. Dennis C. Hendershot in recognition of his outstanding chemical engineering contributions and achievements in the areas of Loss Prevention, Safety, and Health. Mr. Hendershot received his Bachelors Degree in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University and his Masters Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Hendershot spent his working career at Rohm and Haas Company, where he rose from process research engineer through several successively more important positions to that of Senior Technical Fellow in the Process Hazard Assessment / Environmental Engineering Department. During most of his career, he was responsible for providing process safety support to new and existing process facilities, including process safety systems and standards, process hazard analysis, quantative risk analysis, incident investigation, and security vulnerability assessments. He retired from Rohm and Haas Company in July 2005, and is now a Principal Process Safety Specialist for Chilworth Technology and a staff consultant to the Center for Chemical Process Safety.

    Mr. Hendershot has served AIChE on a number of CCPS subcommittees and on the CCPS Managing Board. He has been a Session Chair, Symposium Chair, and Committee Chair for the AIChE Group 11A Loss Prevention Symposium Programming Committee. He has been a Director, Vice Chair, and Chair of the Safety and Health Division. He was a member of the AIChE National Programming Committee from 2000 to 2003, was on AIChE's Board of Directors from 2001 to 2003, and was an AIChE Foundation Trustee from 2002 to 2004. Mr. Hendershot serves as liaison between the Safety and Health Division and the American Chemical Society's Division of Chemical Health and Safety. He served on the American Chemistry Council's Distribution Risk Management Task Group and on the National Academies Committee on Assessing Vulnerabilities Related to the National Chemical Infrastructure. He serves on editorial review boards of Process Safety Progress, Chemical Engineering Progress, the Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries, and the Journal of Chemical Health and Safety.

    Mr. Hendershot has authored or coauthored more than fifty papers and publications on process safety and loss prevention. His interests extend to the history of technology, the philosophy of engineering design, creative aspects of engineering, railroad history, Shakespeare plays, and Mahler symphonies.

    The Safety and Health Division and the entire engineering community recognizes and appreciates Mr. Hendershot's contributions to chemical process safety and his dedication to our profession.

PREVIOUS WINNERS OF THE
Norton H. Walton/Russell L. Miller Award

Download Nomination Form (Adobe PDF 9kB)

William H. Doyle Award

The William H. Doyle Award is presented by the Loss Prevention Committee to the presenter of the best paper given at each Symposium. The committee considers both technical content and presentation effectiveness. The criteria are that the paper:

• Must be clear and well presented. Audio-visual aids must be clear and effective.
• Should have wide applicability to loss prevention efforts in the chemical industry.
• Adds substantial knowledge to the field of loss prevention.
• Engages and stimulates the intellect of the audience.
• Would cause BILL DOYLE to rise to his feet, ask a penetrating question, make decisive comments, and then lead the applause.

The WILLIAM H. DOYLE AWARD winner for 2006 is Dr. Erdem A. Ural for the paper "Dust Explosion Venting Through Ducts" presented at the 39th Loss Prevention Symposium in Atlanta, GA in April, 2005. The abstract of the paper follows.

Dust Explosion Venting Through Ducts
Erdem A. Ural
Loss Prevention Science & Technologies, Inc.
8 18 Washington Street
Stoughton, Massachusetts

ABSTRACT

    Explosion venting is often the lowest cost solution among available protection options. On the other hand, the burnt and unburnt material ejected from a vent opening can create a serious threat to personnel or to vulnerable equipment located near the vent. In situations where such a threat exists, installing a vent duct to redirect the discharge to a safe location is a common solution.

    Through various factors discussed in the paper, the presence of the vent duct increases the resistance to vent discharge. Several public guidelines such as NFPA 68, prEN 14491, and VDI 3673 provide differing methodologies to account for this effect. Besides, currently available public methodologies are limited to idealized straight vent ducts only.

    This paper reviews available test data and our contemporary understanding of the phenomena involved in deflagration venting through ducts. Then, an improved calculation method is proposed. The new method eliminates the problems identified with the published methods. It can also handle real life vent duct installations which may have obstructions such as bends, elbows, bird screens or rain covers.

    Vent duct effects are accounted for using simple algebraic correlations. Improved correction factors for vent cover deployment pressure (Pstat), and enclosure aspect ratio (LID) are also developed and presented in this paper. These new correlations are also applicable to simple vents without ducts.

    The practical use of the correlations are illustrated by solving two sample benchmark problems.

PREVIOUS WINNERS OF THE
WILLIAM H. DOYLE AWARD