Industrial system for mitigation of vapor cloud explosions

Abstract

The oil industry operates installations and processes with important quantities of flammable substances within a wide range of pressures and temperatures. A particular hazard for this type of installations is an accidental release of a large quantity of flammable material resulting in a devastating vapor cloud explosion.Extensive research was conducted to assess the efficiency of chemicals for inhibition of flames. Especially alkali metal compounds (especially carbonates and bicarbonates of sodium and potassium) have shown to be one of the more efficient flame inhibitor species.In this paper, the principles of flame inhibition by alkali metal compounds are briefly explained. Based on these principles, a practical implementation of an industrial system for chemical inhibition of vapor cloud explosions is discussed. This implementation is based on the use of dry powders of carbonates and bicarbonates of sodium and potassium as flame inhibitor species.The efficiency of the final design of the inhibition system was tested and confirmed on a very large scale in Vapor Cloud Explosion tests in California (US) in September 2016. Several projects in TOTAL were identified in which the VCE inhibition technology is implemented (new cracker units in Daesan (South-Korea) and in Port Arthur (United States)).