All refiners employ engineered safeguards so they may reduce to a tolerable level the risk of process hazards. Emergency Isolation Valves (EIVs) are among the engineered safeguards commonly considered. An EIV is a special category of valve that is dedicated to the purpose of isolating large inventories of flammable or toxic material from sources or equipment whose relative likelihood of significant leakage is high.

The number, type and service of EIVs that are employed vary to a great degree from refiner to refiner and from site to site. This paper presents the results of a benchmarking study that was performed to determine the most prevalent practices in industry and to establish the degree of adoption for some of the more common EIV services. The survey reveals norms pertaining to the service, installation methodology, hardware preference and maintenance practices that are common to major refineries.