ARLINGTON, Va. ," In a move to bring the chemical industry one step closer to a secure cyberspace, the Chemical Industry Data Exchange (CIDX) and the Chemicals Sector Cyber-Security Information Sharing Forum launched the Chemicals Sector Cyber-Security Practices, Standards and Technology Initiative. A new business unit within CIDX will focus specifically on cyber-security.

"The Cyber-Security Practices, Standards and Technology Initiative will leverage the CIDX infrastructure, its experience implementing global e-business standards and its position as a voice of the industry' for the chemical sector to drive a rapid and unified response to the critical issue of cyber-security," said Patricia Simmons, CIDX executive director and member of the Chemicals Sector Cyber-Security Program Implementation Team. "Through our preliminary work, we have identified a substantial body of cyber-security practices and standards that already exist. Our focus moving forward will be to establish industry consensus and drive implementation of the mutually agreed-upon standards."

According to CIDX, the newly created business unit will be charged with identifying immediate opportunities to improve the base level of cyber-security performance within the industry. However, its activities will be independent of the XML data standards activities.

"We won't be taking the volunteers that are working on XML projects and have them working on the cyber-security initiative," said Laura Field, a CIDX spokesperson. "Rather, we'll have this separate business unit and a separate group of volunteers dedicated to the task."

The funding for the new initiative also will be new, Field added. Current CIDX members will be charged a new member fee for participation in the cyber-security business unit "so as not to take any money from the XML effort because we don't want it to lose any momentum," Field clarified.

The cyber-security business unit assumes responsibility for two elements of the Chemicals Sector Cyber-Security Program: establishing sector practices and standards and encouraging acceleration of improved security technology and solutions development. And the participation of member volunteers will be integral to achieving these goals.

Much of the initial work will consist of assessment activities, including "a lot of the communications activities between these individual volunteers, what they bring to the table as representatives of their companies, how they share it and what they bring back from the CIDX meeting to their own organizations," Field explained.

At press time, an organizational meeting was scheduled for February 4 through February 5 at the Wyndham Baltimore Inner Harbor Hotel in Baltimore. The goal of the meeting, said CIDX, was to provide an overview of the work completed to date, develop future goals and establish an action plan.

HOUSTON ," Corrosion costs the chemical and related industries more than a billion dollars annually. Essential to successful corrosion management, equipment integrity, process safety and process profitability is the selection of the proper alloys in equipment fabrication.

A recently developed software tool, the ASSET alloy selection system for elevated temperature, can be used to point chemical, petrochemical and other facility operators toward the most appropriate materials for specific corrosive plant conditions. The tool sprung out of a partnership among the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Industrial Technologies, Shell Global Solutions (U.S.) Inc., Oak Ridge National Laboratory and a variety of other interested parties. It now is available through Shell Global Solutions, Houston.

By using the corrosion prediction/ management system, plants stand to slash corrosion-related costs and enhance productivity, said Shell Global Solutions. The initial version assesses potential corrosion mechanisms for 80 commercial alloys exposed to oxidation, sulfidation, sulfidation/oxidation, carburization and other corrosive environments under temperatures ranging from 200F to 2,150F.

"In some senses, [the tool] has been in development in various ways about 10 or 15 years," noted Dr. Randy John, staff research engineer for Shell Global Solutions and the principal investigator on the project. The raw data used in development have been generated over a period of approximately 50 years, he added, coming from Shell, industry projects and both publicly available and privately acquired data sources.

According to John, the tool provides a modern means to perform the old-fashioned, time-consuming aspects of a corrosion engineer's job. Traditionally, he said, the engineer gathers such information by pouring through handbooks and papers, by making comparisons against charts, tables and equations, and by simply relying on a lot of personal experience. The approach is not only time-consuming and resource-intensive, noted John, but also potentially lacks objectivity.

In comparison, the ASSET tool introduces efficiencies ," and adds capabilities ," to a plant's corrosion-fighting arsenal. On the efficiencies side, said John, it provides a "better, faster and cheaper" way to do things plants already are doing.

On the capabilities side, the tool provides a quick way to compare data and to predict corrosion rates for an unprecedented number of alloys under a wide variety of process conditions. Ordinarily, such predictions would require lab experiments or plant monitoring that might last several months or even years, stressed John, or would necessitate a guess or an estimate ," and quite likely an adjustment at a later date. "We can reduce the amount of time it takes to produce a good answer easily from months to hours now," he added.