Providing a model to evaluate the spread of fire in a chemical warehouse using numerical simulation and Bayesian network

Abstract

Chemical warehouses are one of the important sources in process units. Locations are one of the issues that should be investigated in closed environments due to the many types of chemicals and storage conditions. In this study, fire dynamics simulation (FDS), was used to simulation of fire in the presence and non-presence of the ventilation system. Then the spread of fire in the warehouse was evaluated based on domino methods and finally the Bayesian network (BN) was used to update the rate of fire spread. The simulation results in this approach showed that the highest amount of heat flux related to iso-octane fire at L/D= 0.3 when the ventilation system is off and the doors are closed. The updated results of the fire spread modeling in BN showed that if a fire occurs in isooctane barrels, it has the highest rate of spread with a probability of 22% and the lowest rate of spread in Diglycolamine(DGA) barrels with a probability of 0.4%. From the results of this study, it is possible to understand the importance of arranging materials according to the principles of compatibility of chemical materials, and based on this, appropriate control measures can be provided.