PUBLICATIONS AND VIDEOS

SUMMARY

A review of past incidents in the chemical and process industries has shown that many catastrophic incidents have been caused by accidental hazards and domino effects, such as the incidents at oil storage facilities in Bayamon, Puerto Rico (2009), Buncefield, England (2005) and Tupras, Turkey (1999). Without a proper understanding and reliable quantitative risk assessment of domino effects, these severe accidents will continue to occur. A comprehensive risk assessment that considers all possible hazards in an oil tank farm can help identify potential mitigations measures to prevent such chain events from occurring.

The risk assessment approach that is presented is innovative and aims to quantify the risk of various hazards, both process and non-process, to a large oil storage facility. The process hazards include fire, blast, toxic release, smoke, and loss of containment, while non-process hazards include earthquakes and tornadoes. The assessment process involves quantifying the risk associated with each individual hazard, followed by an evaluation of the risk of domino effects triggered by fire, blast, and earthquake.

A methodology has been established to conduct a quantitative risk assessment of domino hazards, which involves estimating the likelihood of primary accidents escalating. This is achieved using advanced computational tools such as quantitative risk analysis and consequence analysis. For example, when assessing the risk of fire, the time it takes for tanks to fail is quantified as a function of thermal radiation at different utilization levels. This information is then used to determine the probability of failure based on the time to effective mitigation, using a probabilistic approach. Similarly, fragility curves are developed to quantify the probability of failure under seismic loading for different seismic hazard levels and utilization ratios.