Fire and Explosion Risk Assessment in a Combined Cycle Power Plant

Abstract

Fire and explosion are the most prevalent accidents in chemical and process industries. Hence, identification of the hazard factors and the methods of controlling these two major accidents are very important in the process industries. In this paper, fire and explosion hazards of some process units at a combined cycle power plant have been estimated using the Dow fire and explosion index. The results of this study show that methane fueled turbine has the highest value of Dow index which is 321, turbine unit with gas oil and gas oil storage site have the Dow index values of 147.5 and 35.5 respectively. The loss control credit factor for methane fueled turbine unit was 0.36 and the Actual Maximum Probable Property Damage was 4.12 US million dollars. Maximum Probable Days Outage is estimated to be 50 days and finally, the loss due to unit pauses is calculated to be 3.03 US million dollars. In addition, the findings of the current study show that the gas oil storage unit suffers the highest amount of loss due to business interruption. The findings of the present study can be used for the improvement of inherent safety and can also be applied to estimate the losses due to fire and explosion.