CSE-Institut | CSE Center of Safety Excellence gGmbH

PPS at the CSE

What is actually PPS?

As safe as possible – without exaggerating.

Avoiding fires, explosions, toxic hazards – Process and Plant Safety (PPS) secures technical facilities and protects against incidents. Techniques are learned here to recognise and assess hazards and methods are defined to protect against them.

What is actually PPS?

PPS is used to safeguard technical plants in such a way that hazards due to fires, explosions or toxicological hazards can be reasonably excluded.

This applies to very different facilities, e.g. a storage tank as well as a chemical reactor or a gas pipeline. Hazards can arise from the substances themselves, from chemical reactions or from malfunctions such as faulty operation, faulty dosing, faulty heating, fires, etc. If hazardous substances are released, fires or explosions with heat radiation and pressure waves may occur. Toxicological hazards must also be taken into account. What can happen in the worst case and what effects are possible – this is assessed by risk analyses.

Technical facilities may only be operated if they are safe. But what does “safe” actually mean? In Germany, this is defined by the state of the art. Based on measurements and experience, experts specify minimum standards for how technical systems are to be safeguarded. With PPS, a decision is made on a case-by-case basis as to how these specifications are to be implemented in a specific plant.

PPS is dynamic: With new findings, the requirements for safeguarding technical plants also change.

The state of the art is continuously being developed. The development is shaped by new findings that come from research or from events.

At the CSE Institute, research is carried out in the field of process and plant safety in order to make technical plants steadily safer. People and the environment are thus protected even better than before.