Presentation

By
Safety Aspects in
Palm Oil Mill
 Loading
Bay

Excess Fruit
Fibres Elevator
Hazardous
Areas In
Palm Oil
Mills

Kernel Depericar
Silo per
Loading Bay
During low crop season the Fresh Fruit bunches may be left at the loading bay for a long time
before they are being transferred to the steriliser. The accumulation of palm fruits here increases
the risk of spontaneous combustion

Fruit Elevator
After sterilising the palm fruits are warm and oily. As the fruits are transferred by fruit elevator (in
some mills only), any contact of additional heats may cause a fire inside the fruit elevator. A fire in
the fruit elevator is difficult to control because it is partly covered and it could spread to the rest
of the production line. The additional heat could be a result of hotwork done for maintenance or
repair at a location near the fruit elevator.

Depericarper
Fruits from the pressor are transferred into the depericarper after most of the oil is obtained. The
depericarper separates the fruit into fibres and kernel. A fire can occur here because there are
fuel (dry fibres), oxygen (air required to blow fibres to boiler) and heat source (generated by the
depericarper machines).

Kernel Silo
The kernel silo area is hazardous due to its oil content and temperature. Fire can be ignited
spontaneously inside the silo if the kernels are kept there longer than it should. The fire hazards
are increased as the fuel, oxygen and heat are all inside the silo making fire fighting more difficult
to handle.
Excess Fibres
Sometimes (in some mills) there will be excess fibres not required by the boiler. The excess fibres
are usually dry and easily combustible. Accumulation of such waste within the production building
increases the risk of fire. When the excess fibres are on fire, they are also possible to spread fire
because they can be blown by wind to other areas.
LOSS PREVENTION MEASURE FOR PALM
OIL MILLS
Fire Fighting Equipment

Hand Fire Extinguishers

Hydraulic Hose Reels

Hydrants and Canvas Hoses

Water Drencher System

No Smoking Rule

The No Smoking rule should be strictly enforced by the mill management

throughout the entire mill

Employees caught smoking should be given a stern warning and for second time
offenders, dismissal should be considered.
Hot Work Permit

All the hot process inside the premises (e.g. cutting, welding etc.) should only be
conducted with a Hot Work Permit Scheme implemented.

With the Hot work Scheme, no employee or outside contractor may start any hot
work operations until he has obtained a permit from the factory manager or safety
officer.

The permit is a means of ensuring that :-

(i) The area is made as safe as possible before any hot work begins
(ii) Precautions are taken while the work is in progress
(iii) The area is checked afterwards

Security Guards

The security guards must be provided with a telephone in the guard house in order
to make a call to the fire brigade in an emergency.

Patrol clocking stations should be fitted around the premises perimeter so that the
security guards patrol the premises at regular intervals, especially at night.
Protection to weighbridge
The weighing cell at weighbridge is sensitive to lightning damage. Apart from
using lightning arrestor and surge protector, other recommendations which
have been practiced by some palm oil mills are :

a)constructing a shed over the weighbridge area

b) changing pit type weighbridge to 1 foot elevated weighbridge
c) manual weighing when there is a thunder storm
d) using surge protector for both ends of cable connecting computer and weigh
cells
e) separate earthing for lightning arrestors and electricals

Housekeeping (Workshop & Store)

The workshop and store are areas where good housekeeping procedures need
to be implemented. These would be :-
a) All oxy-acetylene and other gas cylinders are chained within a confined area
to prevent the cylinders from toppling.
b) Ensuring all oil containers (including empty drums) are always kept closed
with the lids screwed on. This is because if left open, flammable vapours
may disperse in the air and if it comes into contact with an ignition source,
an explosion may result.
c) All oil leaks should be cleaned and the rags used to clean it should not be
Articles involving Palm Oil Mill
Accident
Palm Oil Explosion: Another Victim Dies
Overview of Palm Oil
Mill Maintenance
 To drive continuous improvement, corrective actions and remedies shouldbeapparent.

ProperKPIs,suchasOEE,shouldbeusedtoassessmaintenanceperformance and
tocreate transparency ofthe interdepartmental relationships; KPIs that do not do this
are useless and should be discarded.

Organizations that want to survive in today's highly competitive business environment

must address the need forhigh quality, lower costs and more effective, swifter
research and development (R&D).

Competitive pressures and changing production management paradigms, in recent

years, have increased the importance of reliable and consistent production equipment.

Maintenance, being an important support function in enterprise operations with

significant investments in plants and
machinery,playsanimportantroleinmeetingthistallorder.

Theinefficienciesinequipment management have significant impact on organization's

throughput, operating expense, inventory, and profitability.

As a result, managing equipment performance becomes a challenging task for

managers in manufacturing organizations; maintenance has thus emerged as an
essential core function in the manufacturing and processing industries
 Maintenance has been defined as the combination of all the technical and administrative
actions, including supervision, intended to retain an item, or restore it to a state in which it can
perform a required function.

The scope of maintenance management should, therefore, cover every stage in the life cycle of
technical systems (plant, machinery, equipment, and facilities); specification, acquisition,
planning, operation, performance & evaluation, improvement and disposal.

Maintenance is considered as a process that monitors a technical system's capability to deliver

services, records problems for analysis, takes corrective/adaptive/perfective
orpreventiveactions,andconfirmsrestoredcapability.

Example of effective and efficient maintenance strategies:

1. Condition- 4. Breakdown
based 3. RCM maintenance
maintenance (BDM) approaches
(CBM)

2. PM 5. TPM
1. Condition based maintenance (CBM)
Predictive or CBM strategy reduces the probability of sudden sporadic failures
with the aid of diagnostics and timely intervention.

For instance, diagnostic equipment are used to measure the physical

conditions such as temperature, vibration, noise, corrosion, etc. about the
root cause(s) and failure mechanisms.

Application of CBM has become popular in process industries, such as paper

mills, oil-refineries, sugar mills and thermal power plants.

In order to achieve an effective implementation ofzero-failure strategy the

condition monitoring system helps to discover failure
causes,potentialfailures andmechanismsoffailure.
2. Preventive Maintenance (PM)
The main objective of carrying out PM is to reduce the frequent and sudden
sporadic failures by performing repairs, replacement, overhauling,
lubrication, cleaning and inspection.

It is done at a specific predetermined interval of time say weekly, monthly,

bi-monthly, half-yearly or annually regardless of the condition of the
equipment/component.

PM reduces the probability of equipment breakdown by proper planning

ofinterval (age-based or calendar based), for carrying out PM tasks.

Forsuccessful implementation of PM and assessment of the time for action, a

decision support system is required.
3. Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM)
It is defined as a systematic approach used to optimize preventive andpredictive
maintenance programs to increase equipment efficiency (uptime, performance and
quality) while targeting on minimizing the maintenancecost.

RCM focus is on maintaining system function rather than restoring equipment to an

ideal condition.

It offers tremendous opportunities in areas such as fossil power plants, oil-refineries,

and other process industries.

The primary objective ofRCM is to preserve system function.

To attain this objective various failure modes that cause functional failure are
identified, then prioritized accordingly to reflect theirimportance in system functioning
and consequences of failure.

The process of RCM helps determine the maintenance requirements of any asset and
helps conduct analysis to ensure the asset continues to perform the task without loss
of function.
4. ReactiveorBreakdownMaintenance(BDM)
In reactive maintenance, which is also known as BDM, repairs are done to bring the
equipment back from failure stage to operational stage.

It results in fluctuation
inproduction,higherdowntimeandincreaseinthescrapandreworkrate.

Thus,the ultimate effect is an increase in overall maintenance costs and no action is

taken to detect the onset or how to prevent frequent failures, which accounts for
usually high maintenance related costs.

BDM is a feasible approach, as its main objectiveis to keep theprocess running in

order tomaximize the availability in a situation where customer demand exceeds
supply andprofit margins are large.

Traditionally, this typeof strategy was mainly practiced as an action-oriented or fire-

fighting approach that solvedproductionproblems.
5. Total Productive Maintenance
Having introduced Preventive Maintenance, the process industries then began to
implement TPM.

Since, there have been a few studies done in the area of TPM to investigate the TPM
relationship with manufacturing performance and businessperformance.

TPM is defined as an innovative approach to maintenance that optimizes equipment

effectiveness, eliminates breakdowns, and promotes autonomous maintenance by
operators through day-to-day activities involving the total workforce.

TPM is not a maintenance specific policy. It is a culture, a philosophy and a new

attitude toward maintenance.

According to Chaneski (2002) TPM is a maintenance managementprogram with the

objective of eliminating equipment downtime. TPM describes a relationship between
production and maintenance, for continuous improvement of product quality,
operational efficiency, capacity, assurance and safety.

It is an aggressive strategy that focuses on actually improving the function and design
of the production equipment.
 TPM has been widely recognized as a strategic mechanism for improving
manufacturingperformancebyenhancingtheeffectivenessofproductionfacilities.

TPM is maintenance improvement strategy that involves all employees in the

organization and includes everyone from top management to the line employee.

Strategic TPM implementation programs have revealed that a significant

realisation of manufacturing performance achievements leading to improve core
competitiveness of organisations.

TPM comprises of a companywide equipment

maintenanceprogramthatcoverstheentire
equipmentlifecycleandrequiresparticipationbyevery employee.

It is a production-driven improvement methodology that is designed to optimise

equipment reliability and ensure the efficient management of plant assets.

Another strategic outcome of TPM implementations is the reduced occurrence of

unexpected machine breakdowns that disrupt production and lead to losses.