Analysis of Chemical Disasters Caused by Release of Hydrogen Sulfide-bearing Natural Gas

Abstract

The storage capacity of natural gas containing hydrogen sulfide is large and widely distributed. Release of hydrogen sulfide-bearing natural gas from the pipelines imposes serious threats to the lives and property near the leakage source. Based on a large number of accident statistics and analysis and experiment results, a new risk analysis method for hydrogen sulfide poisoning is proposed, which takes into account of the probability of risk, the scope of damage and dose-response model. A suitable leakage source model is established, and according to the leakage scenario, Gaussian plume model is chosen to estimate the diffusion extent of well blowout of natural gas containing sulfide hydrogen. Three leakage scenarios of Sichuan-Eastern Gas Transportation Project are analyzed based on the historical data of European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group and BG Transco, including individual risk analysis and societal risk analysis. The corresponding social risk curves are plotted and hazardous areas based on different hole diameters are classified. Societal risk varies significantly with the factors such as population density, probability of death and so on. With the acceptable risk criteria published by HSE taken into account, individual risk and societal risk of the leakage scenarios in this paper are found all unacceptable. The proposed method can provide supports for the safety management and maintenance of natural gas pipeline as well as evacuation after accidents happen.