Fire Protection in the Chemical Industry

2015

Many hazard identification and risk management techniques are used in chemical process industries (like HAZOP, QRA, PHA) at the design stage and in operational plants to ensure smooth and safe run of all l plant operations and activities.. The implementation of these techniques is robust, yet accidents happen in chemical process industry. The investigation of such accidents has shown that the active measures for prevention are inadequate and are often poorly designed. The purpose of this manuscript is to study a gas processing facility and identify the needs for such active measures which will act as first line of intervention to fire incidents, that will help in avoiding the escalation of small incident towards a catastrophic event.

2019

It is increasingly recognised that all complex buildings should be covered by a relevant and up to date fire strategy. This is particularly the case for special infrastructures such as process plant buildings (for e.g. power stations). These buildings contain a number of risk areas, each of which requires an appropriate and specialised level of evaluation. A fire strategy should consider eight key elements (fire safety factors), all of which are relevant to their fire safety and protection. The fire safety elements are the basis for the determination of a new semi-quantitative methodology of the evaluation of the Fire Risk Index assessment. The methodology contains a number of checks appropriate for different industrial areas, graphical tools and calculation procedures. The process allows the comparison of an actual fire strategy against a pre-determined baseline strategy. The case study for an exemplar industrial boiler house is used to illustrate the proposed methodology.

Springer Transactions in Civil and Environmental Engineering

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Chemical engineering transactions, 2018

Fire and explosion risk evaluation in the industrial context is a fundamental tool for work owners and safety manager to individuate critical scenario and issues related to fire and explosion in industrial facilities and sites. The primary objective of the risk evaluation is the definition of possible accident scenarios, their likelihood and consequences concerning damages to people and facilities, as to define an adequate fire strategy and preventive-protection measures. In this work, three real accidents were tested with three real fire and explosion risk evaluation methods, among the most adopted worldwide: FE The Mond Index, by Imperial Chemical Industries; Safety Weighted Hazard Index (SW&HI), by Khan, Husain, Abbasi (2001).All these methodologies could be classified among semi-quantitative index methods, and their outputs are quantitative values (indexes) which indicate to analysts the most hazardous units or processes and help to define priorities on protection system impleme...

Sustainability

There is a mismatch between the desire to introduce greater levels of sustainability in engineering design and in the need to provide effective engineering solutions, particularly where issues of human safety and asset protection are involved. Sustainability engineering typically incorporates economic, environmental, and social factors, all of which are highly relevant and applicable to fire safety and the design of fire protection systems. The term fire strategy denotes a documented methodology to encapsulate a full range of such systems, within a single framework, for more complex risks such as those found in the process industry. The subject of fire safety is emotive and its application within building design may not change unless we refocus on a holistic and strategic approach, especially for complex building profiles. Fire is a recognized critical safety issue for most types of industrial plants. Due to the complexity of the processes, even a relatively small fire accident can ...

The author is a professional engineer and an independent consultant with more than ten years of industrial experience in chemical, petroleum and petrochemical industries where he designed process safety systems and made industrial risk analysis, performed safety reviews, implemented compliance solutions, and participated in process safety management (PSM). The author holds a Bachelor (B. Eng.) degree in Chemical Engineering and Licentiate (Lic. Eng.) degree in Chemical Engineering from School of Engineering of Polytechnic Institute of Oporto (Portugal), and a Master (M. Sc.) degree in Environmental Engineering from Faculty of Engineering of the University of Oporto (Portugal). Also, he has an

Fire Safety Journal, 2019

The primary cause of machinery space fires is cited as the release of flammable oil mist contacting unprotected hot surfaces. With this being common knowledge why do we continue to see this type of incident reoccurring on ships carrying thousands of passengers to precarious destinations? We review regulatory and Class requirements with respect to fire safety, Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) as a rule-making instrument of the IMO, accident investigation recommendations involving fire, fire safety technology, and research literature. For each constituent of fire safety control, the paper aims to determine the preferred strategies for accident prevention and their relative cost effectiveness. Subsequently, the cost effectiveness of the current safety approach is established. This review found that fire prevention could be made more cost effective if its scope was broadened beyond the detection of proximate events occurring immediately before ignition. The findings suggest that more cost-effective safety measures can be developed by addressing systemic causes of fire. Removal of the systemic causal factors of fire from the equation, means we can address fire safety prior to the moments before ignition when the point of no return can unwittingly be passed. The paper suggests directions of how this can be achieved. Design & Operation Implementation of design and operational safety measures Rules & regulations (existing and prospective-FSA) Political, commercial and other pressures Accident investigation Safety systems on market from technology suppliers Knowledge base Academic research

Fire Safety Science, 1991

Fires in industry impinge on the safety of workers, those living in the vicinity of the installation and on the~nvironment. Though its control of industrial safety in the United Kingdom, the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) encounters a wide variety of fire problems. This paper examines the scope and magnitude of the problem and, by reference to examples from HSE's recent work, illustrates the wide range of situations which can occur. Methods for identification of the hazard are examined and the tools which can be used for its quantification are detailed. Reference is made to experiment and modelling of varying complexity. Particular attention is paid to the requirements of HSE. Finally suggestions are made for the most promising lines of research and the way in which safety standards can be maintained and developed in industry.

1997

A survey has been made of the accidents involving ® re contained in the MHIDAS database. Of all the accidents that occurred up to the end of 1993, 41.5% (2283) involved ® re. These ® re accidents occurred in process plants (28%), transport (27%), storage plants (21%) and loading/unloading (7%). The type of accident is studied, as well as its effects on the population (number of deaths or people injured). The accumulated frequencyfatality curve is plotted; the line follows approximately a straight line, with a slope of -0.91. Finally, some conclusions are derived about the severity of ® re accidents and the importance of increasing safety in the future.

Journal of Failure Analysis and Prevention, 2019

The dependency of the society on the hydrocarbon as an energy source has increased tremendously, leading to the rapid development of this process industry. A fire accident that occurred on the 6th of July 2016 at a petrochemical complex plant in the southern part of Iran, Mahshahr petrochemical zone, has called for a more robust and all-inclusive efforts toward ameliorating and forestalling future occurrence. The on-site investigations concluded that the fire was triggered by the leakages through the ruptured blind flange gasket in the pipeline. Thus, certain inquiries on the development of robust process safety technologies gave useful insight into those capable enough to identify and handle various uncertainties in the short and long time basis, to forestall catastrophic accidents. Therefore, it is worthy and pertinent to ascertain whether process safety technology is developing correspondingly at the same pace with the process industry. Are the correct things done in the right way? If yes, then why do these catastrophic accidents keep happening? If no, how can these uncertainties in the process be properly and adequately handled, contained and managed? Failure to provide adequate and incontrovertible answers to these questions toward taking uncompromising safety actions is an invitation to more accidents in the near future. In this study, explanation on how to identify and cope with various uncertainties in process safety science is provided through learning from a real case study of a fire accident that occurred in the aforementioned petrochemical plant.