Making Piping Systems Fire-Safe-Simple Solutions for Preventing a Disaster

Abstract

Loss of life and property losses totaling tens of billions of dollars have piping engineers scrambling to specify “fire-safe” components in fire-prone locations: on board ships, and in power plants, refineries, and other perilous applications. Fire-safe valves, the first line of defense in containing a fire, were introduced some 25 years ago, with fire-safe actuators following soon afterwards. Little attention has been given, however, to designing and selecting the other piping components such as flanges, gaskets, bolting, and fittings to ensure their integrity in a fire. Just like in an electric circuit where, if a single component in series fails, the flow of electricity stops; likewise, the failure of a single piping component could result in a fire of catastrophic proportions. This paper discusses the availability of critical fire-safe components for Navy shipboard piping systems and provides some simple solutions which, if implemented, could prevent such a disaster. Discussion is provided on how a fire starts and how it reaches catastrophic proportions, the definitions of survivability and fire-safe components, materials of construction, component design, fire-safe valves and actuators, gaskets, pipe flanges, flange bolting, pipe fittings and unions, brazing and welding, insulation, composite piping materials, and other related subjects. Details are also provided on 78 fires that have occurred on Navy surface ships in the last ten years and their causes.