Assessment of hazards under operation of ship's Ammonia refrigerating machineries in the Caspian basin

Abstract

The ten years‘ period of a development of Pre-Caspian states, earlier having entered the former USSR, is characterized as a transition to new patterns of ownership and economic mechanisms through intensification of all processes, increase of power-to—weight ratio of production, application of new techniques and materials, essentially new approaches to organization of work and actions of ships’ owners. As the practice shows, usually such transition is accompanied by numerous techncgenic catastrophes with human victims and severe moral and material losses both for community and environment. Dangerous situation formed up to now and connected with accidents, industrial injuries and ecological safety is explained both by constructional imperfection of obsolete equipment and equally lcw culture of safety, technological indiscipline and psychological mood of the people. These factors are not given due attention in the most scientific researches. Since 1991 in USSR, and then in Russia, the State technological program Safety of the Popuiation and Economic Objects with Reference to Hazards of Natural and Technogenic Catastrophes is being executed by the pooled efforts of leading research, design and educational institutions of the country. Within the framework of this program interesting data on methodology of examination and improvement of job and environmental safety based on general principles and new special scientific methods is accumulated. Nevertheless, a problem of prevention of emergency incidents remains to be unsolved up to now [1]. Risk of emergency incidents with negative ecological consequences is an inevitabie concomitant factor of industrial activity, and in particular of using freon and ammcniac refrigerating machineries. According to generally used terminology, the hazard is a degree of danger, defined by a combination of frequency (or probability) of undesirable events and significance of their impact [1; 2; 3 etc.]. In our opinion, the above _definition of hazard should not be taken as ‘final and it requires to be added with, at |east,by two points . 1. Risk of operating dangerous industrial objects is permissible, if its value is so inappreciable, that for the sake of benefit (profit) obtained the community is ready to run the hazard. According to this definition, in order to assess hazard, the latter should be compared to profit, which is supposedxto be received from a dangerous production activity. This will allow to define the well- grounded threshold between permissible and intolerable hazards. Meanwhile, not only a bound between permissible and intolerable hazard is of interest (which, by the way, can be given by directions in the normative documents), but, and in the greater degree, it is interesting to know how close subjects are to this threshold . 2. Identification of the dangers carried out with using statistical data on emergencies as connected with ship refrigerating machineries [4], shows that risk of operating refrigerators exists in the form of potentially possible emergencies. Therefore, hazards of such installations and most dangerous industrial enterprises should be estimated not by frequency but probability of occurrence of undesirable events (emergencies) and significance oftheir consequences. References Belov, P.G. 1996, Fundamental Theory of Engineering System of Safety.- M.: Safety“,MlB STS. , 424 p. Henley, D., Kurnamoto, H 1984, Reliability of Engineering Systems and Estimation of Hazard ll Translation from English. - M.: Machine industry, 582 p. Gosgorte 1996, khnadzor of Russian Federation Methodicai Guides to Analysis of Hazard of Dangerous industrial Enterprises (Doc. 08-120-96). Approved by, Decree 29 of 12.07.96. ASTU 2000, Formal Estimation of Safety of Ship's Ammoniac Refrigerating Machines. The SRW report PC-38/200. - Astrakhan Kamovnikov, B.P., Babakin. B.s., Dunchenko, N.l. A 1996, Quantitative Assessment of Engineering Systems and the Level of Technologies. - M.: MSAABT, 70 p.