標題: The need for solutions to present and future challenges is clear [打印本頁] 作者: ftlrcyyp 時間: 2016-3-27 03:17 標題: The need for solutions to present and future challenges is clear
Institution of Mechanical Engineers event
Good evening and thank you to IMechE for inviting me here to talk to you this evening. Speaking to an audience of engineers is always an honour and a pleasure. My own background is in chemical engineering and I am proud to have become a chartered engineer and a fellow of my professional institution.
As you will all know only too well, in the 21st Century the challenges we face across the world require the very best of science, technology and engineering innovation to address them. IMechE's own vision is that the world can be improved through engineering. I agree with that, but we must deliver that improvement to the world and deal with the challenges that lie in doing so. In Great Britain, engineering is at the heart of all our industries technologies that support our daily lives and improve our standard of living. Engineers are vital to a sustainable future and our work must constantly evolve in order to deliver solutions that can sustain and protect our existence.
I want to talk about creating solutions that are inherently sustainable. As well as talking about some of the UK's great engineering successes, I will also remind you of some occasions where we have got it badly wrong.
The need for solutions to present and future challenges is clear, as is the importance of responding to them quickly and effectively. Although the challenges in our rapidly developing modern world may be different to those of the past it is vitally important that we do not forsake what we have learnt or should have learned from previous success and also the failures that have led to terrible disasters.
Population projections suggest that by the year 2050 the human population of our planet will grow from the current seven billion to nine billion that's at least a 30 per cent increase on our already overloaded ecosystem.
For nine billion people to stay alive they will need access to clean water, affordable food, housing, clothing, transport, healthcare and energy supplies. We must also respond to the challenge of climate change. Even if the population were to remain the same over the next 40 years, achieving the sort of reductions in global emissions that are thought necessary to prevent climate change 50 per cent or more would be a challenge enough. However, with 30 per cent more people demanding goods and services which create greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge is simply huge.
But I do believe we can do it. Engineering has been a catalyst to industrialisation that increased the efficiency of production and access to all sorts of goods and services. We can make the sort of technological leaps required for the future because we have shown we can do it in the past.
The modern challenges may be different from those of the past Cheap Polo Clothes but it is essential that we build upon the lessons learned from previous experiences and events.
The most important skill of all for the future may well be an ability to think in multiple dimensions to develop solutions which do not solve one problem only to create a difficulty or problem elsewhere.
Generating power that creates carbon dioxide emissions is clearly not a sustainable solution. Agricultural processes which increase food production and housing which provides shelter is not sustainable Longchamp Handbag Nz if the people who reap the 'benefits' are then placed at risk from flooding or harm to health as a result of development.
Modern Nike Janoski Nz engineers need to be capable of addressing problems in a multi dimensional way, solving today's problems and ensuring a 'cradle to grave'approach.
This means developing solutions which can be built safely, operated safely and when the time comes for them to be replaced by an even better idea the engineer must also know how it is to be decommissioned and disposed of, both safely and sustainably.
I would contend that a major part of the challenge we face today in making the case for new nuclear is a function of that lack of foresight in the past and the nuclear waste legacy which was/is much more to do with defence developments than nuclear power generation.
I realised just how fundamental the understanding of risk and safety was to engineering during my Chemical Engineering course at Imperial College in the 1970s. The exact moment was in June 1974 when a catastrophic event happened one Saturday afternoon at a chemical site at Flixborough in North Lincolnshire.
There was a large explosion at the Nypro site. Twenty eight workers were killed in the explosion and a further 36 suffered injuries. There were a further 53 reported injuries to members of the public in the neighbourhood along with considerable damage to offsite property. There would have been many more casualties had this incident occurred on a weekday rather than a weekend.
Three months before the explosion, a crack had been discovered in one of a series of reactors in the process which was leaking cyclohexane. After shutting down to investigate the decision had been taken to remove the leaking reactor and to install a bypass. On that afternoon in June, Nike Blazer High that bypass system ruptured, resulting in a large leak of cyclohexane which formed a vapour cloud and exploded. All 18 people in the control room were killed when windows shattered and the roof collapsed. Fires burned onsite for 10 Free Run Nike Nz days.
The subsequent investigation said the following:
A plant modification had been made without full assessment of the potential consequences
only limited calculations were undertaken to engineer the change and no drawings were produced;
the new pipework was not pressure tested Supra Online Nz after it was installed;
no one considered the potential for a major disaster to happen as a result of the change that had been made, neither Ralph Lauren Polo had any thought been given to location Abercrombie Nz New Market of personnel in the event of a major incident occurring; and
the incident happened during a start up when people were stretched and under pressure.
When I graduated in 1975, my first employer Exxon put me through rigorous training in process safety management. Flixborough had been a huge wake up call to industry and the lessons were being learned far and wide. Everyone was committed to the principle that "it must never happen again".
Nineteen seventy four was also the year the Health and Safety Executive came into existence as Great Britain's regulator for workplace health and safety.
Prior to the Health and Safety at Work Act, Britain's industrial sectors were regulated by various different bodies all working to different standards. Some sectors of the economy were not subject to health and safety regulation at all.
The 1974 Act changed all that. It put into place a framework of regulation which placed the responsibility for managing risk firmly with those that create the risk. Most of the time, this means the owners of the enterprise and quite clearly in the case of new technologies and new solutions we mean those who develop and implement those solutions and so we come back to us the engineers.
