Risk‐based approach for evaluating safety events in large plants

Abstract

In the nitrogen fertilizer industry, potentially severe impacts can stem from toxic, fire, and explosion hazards from accidental releases and hazards associated with failures in high pressure equipment. While consequence analysis can be used to calculate the severity (as measured by the personnel or buildings in the hazard zone), the very large zones associated with some of the most severe scenarios essentially place the entire facility within the hazard zone, leaving few practical options to mitigate the consequence. Using a quantitative risk analysis approach, which evaluates both the consequence and likelihood of potential events at fertilizer sites, provides additional insight to help make informed decisions about the best way to minimize the risk exposure. © 2012 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Process Saf Prog, 2012

A Quantitative Individual Risk Assessment Method in Process Facilities with Toxic Gas Release Hazards: A Combined Scenario Set and CFD Approach

“…Normally IR was defined as the probability of death to an individual at any particular location due to all undesired events . The total IR at each point was equal to the sum of the IR of all scenarios effects at that point , whereas SR expressed the cumulative risk to groups of people who might be affected by such accident scenarios . This paper will focus on the IR inside the process plants since the individuals may be facing a more direct exposure to toxic gases under release conditions.…”

“…The IR evaluation is also in the scope of quantitative risk analysis (QRA) . QRA is the prevailed risk assessment method and has been widely used in process safety related areas, including design of safety measures , safety management and decision making , developing risk‐based maintenance and inspection strategies , and so forth. The implementation of QRA mainly contains two steps: scenario envisaging and consequence analysis, in which scenario envisaging serves as the basis for the whole risk quantification .…”