Conventionally, businesses that have highly hazardous substances on site have to deploy a process safety management (PSM) program to prevent emergency instances caused due to chemical, thermal, or dust-based hazards. However, in recent years, as plants have continued to grow in scale owing to the increasing customer demand and continuous technology advancements, in-house PSM programs are falling short in ensuring process safety across the ever-evolving facility. As a result, the landscape is witnessing a surge in collaborations with process safety solution vendors that offer solutions capable of helping them safeguard their personnel, equipment, and the entire manufacturing unit at large.

However, as most process safety solution providers only offer limited capabilities that cater to one specific process in their client’s overall operations, a majority of manufacturing companies often end up partnering with multiple firms to ensure effective process safety. In light of this, businesses are in a dire need of process safety and analysis partners that can offer a ‘one-stop-shop’ suite of products and services for all their needs.

Enter Fauske & Associates LLC (FAI), an Illinois-based company that offers state-of-the-art, expert, custom, full-service safety testing, engineering, and analytics solutions alongside next-gen laboratory tools for characterizing reactive chemical systems. The company’s testing services empower its clients in effectively assessing samples gathered from across their process line, thereby enhancing safety against future accidents.

Founded in 1980 by Dr. Hans Fauske, Dr. Michael Grolmes, and Dr. Robert Henry, FAI became a wholly owned subsidiary of Westinghouse Electric Company, LLC, in 1986. FAI assumed early leadership in the acclaimed DIERS program for AIChE and the IDCOR program for the nuclear power industry. Subsequently, the company began expanding its product and services portfolio with innovative tech-driven testing and screening equipment, as well as gathered a team of highly competent process safety professionals to strengthen its advisory services. “Our expertise in reactive chemical hazard and dust combustibility detection as well as sophisticated analytical processes has carved our way to become a leader in industrial and chemical safety,” says Dr. Ashok Ghose Dastidar, VP of Dust & Flammability Testing and Consulting Services at FAI.

The company’s current product suite can be categorized into three types: industrial, software, and laboratory.

Under its software suite, FAI has developed offerings specially designed to help clients mitigate the consequences of thermal hazards through proper relief system design. Additionally, the company supplies calorimetry products that significantly strengthen a client’s process safety defenses via accident simulation testing and screening for undesirable thermal runaway and explosion hazards. “Our portfolio aids our clients in pinpointing where material will be different from other parallel processes, facilitating better sample collection and safety across the process line,” states Dr. Dastidar.

Our expertise in reactive chemical hazard and dust combustibility detection, as well as our sophisticated analytical processes has carved our way to become a leader in industrial and chemical safety

Discussing the core competencies of FAI’s testing portfolio, Dr. Dastidar mentions, “Our lab is one of a few in North America with a 1000-liter explosion chamber, which really gives our clients a true representation of a larger scale explosion hazard at their facility.” Moreover, to identify the critical temperatures that undesirable reactions occur at, FAI runs simultaneous thermal gravimetric and differential calorimetry analyses. Following this, the company also performs mass spectrometry on the received samples to assess the types of combustions occurring and the gases and chemicals being released due to chemical or thermal decomposition. “There are a lot of other toxic gases that people could be exposed to. To mitigate this, our chemical analysis helps them fingerprint their material and gives them an indication of the kind of material that will be generated,” adds Dr. Dastidar. In case of thermal runaway detection, FAI performs a small bench experiment and uses its FERST software to extrapolate the results into a larger scale, thereby driving cost-savings.

Apart from its products and services, FAI also offers advanced training and research related to fundamental physics (like aerosol transport), chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, nuclear engineering, computer simulation, and other fields. More recently, as the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted FAI’s traditional, face-to-face, customer engagement methodology, the company developed a virtual strategy to offer its training, consulting, and advisory offerings in a safe and timely manner. On the other hand, FAI also quickly adopted the required PPE and social distancing guidelines in its laboratory operations to ensure the continuity of sample analysis.

Moving forward, FAI is expanding its marketing endeavors beyond word-of-mouth by building a strong presence across various online platforms. With respect to product portfolio, Dr. Dastidar plans to incorporate additional types of analytical processes into their existing suite to penetrate into more markets and capture a bigger clientele. “We will continue to offer products to enhance process safety while developing our analytical offerings to boost our client’s ability to understand the characteristics of chemical reactions,” concludes Dr. Dastidar.