Abstract
OCI Nitrogen seeks to gain knowledge of (leading) indicators regarding the process safety performance of their ammonia production process. The current research determines the most dangerous process equipment by calculating their effects resulting from a loss of containment using DNV GL's Phast™ dispersion model. In this paper, flammable and toxic effects from a release from the main equipment of an ammonia plant have been calculated. Such an encompassing approach, which can be carried out for an entire plant, is innovative and has never been conducted before. By using this model, it has been demonstrated that the effects arising from an event of failure are the largest in process equipment containing pressurized synthesis gas and ‘warm’ liquid ammonia, meaning the ammonia buffer tanks, ammonia product pumps, and the ammonia separator. Most importantly, this document substantiates that it is possible to rank the most hazardous process equipment of the ammonia production process based on an adverse impact on humans using the calculated effect distance as a starting point for a chance of death of at least 95%. The results from the effect calculations can be used for risk mapping of an entire chemical plant or be employed and applied in a layer of protection analysis (LOPA) to establish risk mitigation measures.
Highlights
In 2015, several major process-related accidents occurred at a few site users of Chemelot, a chemical industrial park in Geleen, The Netherlands (OVV, 2018)
Process safety indicators have been in the spotlight for some time (Swuste et al, 2016); HSE (2006), CCPS (2010), Cefic (2016), OGP (2011) and ANSI/API (2010) have subsequently set up guidelines to measure process safety based on indicators
A selection of the 64 most relevant process equipment of the ammonia production process is shown in Tables 2 and 3
Summary
In 2015, several major process-related accidents occurred at a few site users of Chemelot, a chemical industrial park in Geleen, The Netherlands (OVV, 2018). The increase in the frequency and severity of the accidents caused the Chemelot Board to initiate an external inves tigation. One of the conclusions was that the potential hazards of the plant and the chemical processes do not receive the necessary attention due to an increased focus on occupational safety (Helsloot et al, 2016). The conclusion of Helsloot et al of a wrong focus is not unknown in the chemical industry: both Hopkins (2000) and Baker (2007) arrived at similar conclusions in their reports on the Esso incident in Longford (Australia) and BP incident in Texas (USA) respectively. OCI, one of Chemelot’s largest site users, has faced several serious process safety related accidents, including those at its two ammonia plants. No physical injuries were suffered in any of the incidents, in some cases the ammonia plant had to be shut down for a longer period, these incidents resulted in both hardware damage and a substantial loss of production
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