Integrated assessment of safety distances for rescue work in chemical plant fires involving domino effects

Abstract

This study employed the Suite for the Assessment of Flammable, Explosive, and Toxic Impacts to synergize the environmental data, risk frequency, and physical and chemical properties of chemical‐induced fires and explosions at accident sites and thereby establish an integrated assessment model. In addition, the suite was used to visualize fires and explosions resulting from domino effects caused by thermal radiation and blast overpressure in initial accidents at chemical plants. The simulation results were successfully utilized to respond to a chemical plant fire, assist the fire command officer to determine the range of domino effects during rescue, and extinguish the ignition source. In addition, the model provided safety distances for rescue to enable the proper deployment of rescuers and vehicles and to prevent their exposure to deadly hazards. The simulation results also provided the integrated safety distances including acceptable safety distances for rescuers with the appropriate protective equipment and the range of domino effect during the first accident and the second accident. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog 37: 186–193, 2018

A quantitative deployment scheme of hazardous gas detector

“…In order to improve the fault tolerance of the detection system, Serrano et al 11 proposed SP‐U and SP‐UV models considering the unavailability of detector and voting strategies. Tsai et al 12 synergized the environmental data, risk frequency, and physical and chemical properties of chemical‐induced fires and explosions at accident sites and thereby established an integrated assessment model.…”