1,720,986 research outputs found
Risk based decision-making in plant design
No full textAccidental events that have occurred in chemical and nuclear plants show that the application of technical regulations on its own, even when extremely detailed, does not assure that adequate safety levels are reached and, above all, maintained in time. The paper illustrates, with a simple example, how a risk analysis can be considered as an essential tool for a correct plant design, above all when dealing with major risk installations. In particular the use of the Recursive Operability Analysis is shown, in the phase of accident identification, since it allows to directly draw the logic trees, both Fault and Event Trees for the quantification phase, thus assuring the congruence of the whole analysis
Five dead and five injured in a dimethyl terephthalate plant accident: Serious errors in the plant design coupled with incorrect maintenance management
No full textAt 2:10 in the afternoon of 25 July 1968, an explosion in a tank at the SIR (Società Italiana Resine) petrochemical industry in Porto Torres (Sassari, Sardinia) caused the death of five people and the injury of five others. This article reports the events that led to the accident and explains the analysis activities that led to the reconstruction of the dynamics of the accident. The reconstruction of the etiology of the accident has been synthesized in an Incidental Sequence Diagram, a similar logical tree to the Fault Tree, in which the serious errors in the plant design are highlighted together with the poor management of some of the maintenance work
Analysis of an LPG accidental release
No full textAn industrial LPG storage accident due to the release of propane from a tanker is described in this paper and the sequence of events that led to the collapse of a storage tank is examined using simulation software. A model taking both released flows into account as a radiant thermal contribution in the presence of flames is presented. The progression of the accident is assessed through digitalization and processing of the film of the fireball produced by about 500 L of LPG, whose diameter was calculated as approximately 50m
Small magnitude explosion of Aluminium powder in an abatement plant: A Telling Case
No full textOn the 16th June 2000, an aluminum dust deflagration occurred in a small factory in the north-west of Italy. The explosion took place in an aluminum dust collecting and abatement unit that served a surface polishing plant. The collecting unit was made up of several ducts that conveyed dust into a manifold, which was connected to a cyclone and a bag filter. The cost of the deflagration cost was six injured workers, and relevant damage to the plant machinery, the process building and to other surroundings buildings. Although aluminum dust explosions are well known and have been well documented in the literature, this case study can be considered interesting because of its complex dynamics,which started with a first weak explosion that then evolved into a more severe chain of explosions.This article has drawn upon the official documents written during the investigation and the technical reports prepared by a number of expert witnesses. The data collected during the investigation have made it possible to determine the causes and dynamics of the accident and to calculate the strength of the explosion, on the basis of the distribution of the damage and the launching distance of the fragments. The magnitude of the damage seems to indicate that the amount of dust that took part in the explosion corresponds to the dust that settled on the bag filter
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