Fig.10 presents the immediate causes of accidents and incidents
in the biodiesel industry for the period 2003e2013. It shows that in
the 36.5% of the cases there is not information about event immediate
causes and almost a 18% is under investigation, resulting in
a lack of knowledge about the causes in more than half of the cases.
Concerning the adverse events for which causes are known, the
most frequent causes are Equipment-Mechanical failures (14.1%)
and Human Factor eOperator Error (9.4%). For the last one, the
most common root causes are procedural and supervision failures.
It should be noted that if equipment- mechanical failures could be
analyzed in depth, the contribution of the human factor would be
probably higher since planning and execution of maintenance tasks
depend on operators.