Chemical Industrial Park Research Articles

Impact of inlet boundary number and locations on gas diffusion and flow in a typical chemical industrial park near uneven terrain

Accurate simulation of pollution diffusion under uneven terrain with complicated obstacles is a difficult but important scientific and technological issue. The inlet-boundary was important and single boundary meteorological factors (e.g., wind direction and speed) input were generally employed for the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation. However, for uneven terrain with complicated obstacles, the boundary meteorological condition may be quite different, single boundary input may bring large simulation uncertainty. Consequently, the impact of different inlet boundary number and locations on CFD simulation was investigated based on a scarce tracer-gas field experiment carried out in a chemical industrial park located in a mountainous area. The experimental results implied gas diffusion was influenced by a combination of meteorological conditions from multi-inlet boundaries. The simulation results confirmed that and indicated commonly-used single-inlet boundary input can bring great inaccuracies. The case of inlet boundaries closed to emission sources and intersected the crosswind plane agreed best with measurements. It was also found that the inlet boundary number and locations significantly influence velocity and turbulence. Finally, a guideline for determining the inlet boundaries was proposed. This study can enhance the understanding on CFD simulation, and is beneficial for the selection of inlet meteorological sites to precise prediction.

A Novel Method for Source Tracking of Chemical Gas Leakage: Outlier Mutation Optimization Algorithm.

Chemical industrial parks, which act as critical infrastructures in many cities, need to be responsive to chemical gas leakage accidents. Once a chemical gas leakage accident occurs, risks of poisoning, fire, and explosion will follow. In order to meet the primary emergency response demands in chemical gas leakage accidents, source tracking technology of chemical gas leakage has been proposed and evolved. This paper proposes a novel method, Outlier Mutation Optimization (OMO) algorithm, aimed to quickly and accurately track the source of chemical gas leakage. The OMO algorithm introduces a random walk exploration mode and, based on Swarm Intelligence (SI), increases the probability of individual mutation. Compared with other optimization algorithms, the OMO algorithm has the advantages of a wider exploration range and more convergence modes. In the algorithm test session, a series of chemical gas leakage accident application examples with random parameters are first assumed based on the Gaussian plume model; next, the qualitative experiments and analysis of the OMO algorithm are conducted, based on the application example. The test results show that the OMO algorithm with default parameters has superior comprehensive performance, including the extremely high average calculation accuracy: the optimal value, which represents the error between the final objective function value obtained by the optimization algorithm and the ideal value, reaches 2.464e-15 when the number of sensors is 16; 2.356e-13 when the number of sensors is 9; and 5.694e-23 when the number of sensors is 4. There is a satisfactory calculation time: 12.743 s/50 times when the number of sensors is 16; 10.304 s/50 times when the number of sensors is 9; and 8.644 s/50 times when the number of sensors is 4. The analysis of the OMO algorithm’s characteristic parameters proves the flexibility and robustness of this method. In addition, compared with other algorithms, the OMO algorithm can obtain an excellent leakage source tracing result in the application examples of 16, 9 and 4 sensors, and the accuracy exceeds the direct search algorithm, evolutionary algorithm, and other swarm intelligence algorithms.

Screening organic contaminants in soil by two-dimensional gas chromatography high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry: A non-target analysis strategy and contaminated area case study

Thousands of organic substances that are used in industrial applications ultimately enter the soil and may negatively affect human health. Limited numbers of target pollutants are usually monitored in environmental media because of analytical limitations. In this study, a non-target screening method for quickly analyzing multiple soil samples from a contaminated area (a chemical industry park) by two-dimensional gas chromatography high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry was developed. The types of compounds present in the soil samples were preliminarily analyzed through data simplification and visual assessment. A total of 81 organic compounds with detection frequencies ≥40% in the samples from the chemical industry park were selected for identification, including 38 PAHs, 26 oxygenated organic compounds, eight N-containing compounds, and nine other compounds. Potential sources of the organic compounds in the industrial park were investigated. Some pharmaceutical and organic synthetic intermediates in the soil were affected by nearby chemical plants. After assessing the relative abundances and detection frequencies, 36 pollutants that may pose potential risks to the environment were preliminarily identified. The results of the study were helpful for assessing environmental risks around Yangkou industrial park and they will be helpful when assessing risks in other contaminated areas.

Zero-impact emission limits of enterprise-scale air pollutants—a case study of a typical petrochemical enterprise in Shanghai Chemical Industry Park

ABSTRACT The implementation of pollutant emission control has made initial achievements in the plant power, iron, and steel industries in China. To further improve air quality, it is of great significance to carry out research on zero-impact emissions of the petrochemical industry. Based on the existing concept and practice of zero emissions, this study proposes the concept of zero-impact emissions, taking emission concentration as the constraint. A typical petrochemical enterprise (namely Enterprise A) in Shanghai Chemical Industry Park as the research object, and used the CALPUFF model to simulate the target pollutant emissions (i.e. sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx), particulate matter (PM), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs)). The current emission standard, spatial distributions, and emission heights of chimneys in Enterprise A was considered as the baseline emission scenario and taking the zero-impact emission as a target for simulation. The results show that the current emission standards of NOx and VOCs (benzene) exceeded the zero-impact emission limits, and needed to be reduced by 22% and 87.5%, respectively. Moreover, the areas that exceeded the zero-impact concentration limits were located northwest of the chimneys and Hangzhou Bay. In terms of seasonal effects, the wind conditions in spring were more adverse for the enterprise to achieve zero-impact emissions. Based on the simulation, the zero-impact emission limits of SO2, NOx, PM, and VOCs (benzene) for Enterprise A were 50 mg/m 3, 78 mg/m 3, 10 mg/m 3, and 0.32 mg/m 3, respectively. Implications: Through case study, this paper solves the environmental management issue which is of universal significance for chemical industry park. The concept of zero-impact emissions and the determination method of zero-impact concentration limits proposed in this study could be used as references for related research on cutting emissions. Although the conclusion of this study about the emission limits is not suitable for other enterprises to apply directly, the calculation method of zero-impact emission limit can be used by other enterprises. Furthermore, the zero-impact emission limits on park scale can be determined after comprehensive evaluation based on the calculation results of multiple enterprises.

Source term estimation with deficient sensors: A temporal augment approach

Air pollution of chemical industrial parks (CIPs) is becoming increasingly severe, which has major impacts on the health of local residents. Therefore, source term estimation (STE) is of high importance to find the source locations and back-calculate the source emission rates based on the ambient concentration measurements and meteorological information. However, the number of the ambient sensors is far less than the one of pollution sources for CIPs. This issue of sensor deficiency makes the unknown source parameters untraceable. In this paper, the concept of traceability is introduced to propose a condition to explain when the STE problem has a unique solution. Then an approach using measurements at multiple time points for estimating the emission rate of each source is proposed. In order to satisfy the condition of traceability, the coefficient matrix can be expanded by augmenting measurement samples collected at different time instances with different wind directions when the emission rates keep unchanged. Furthermore, based on the rank of the coefficient matrix, the problem can be classified as fully traceable, partially traceable, and untraceable. Then, the regularized least squares method is applied to estimate the source rates in real-time. Some test results with a simulated scenario demonstrate that the source rate can be reliably estimated with the method proposed. Finally, the limitations and conclusions of the method are stated.

In‐depth exploration into China's industrial park air monitoring market

AbstractIn different regions of China that can range from 5 to 100 km2, various production plants and facilities such as petrochemicals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, paper mills, thermal power plants, hazardous waste disposal sites makes chemical industrial parks with Chinese characteristics. At the same time, these chemical industry parks in various places are in urgent need of advanced monitoring, prewarning, and tracing technologies, in order to strengthen monitoring of atmospheric emissions in chemical industrial parks, and timely prevention of the leakage of exhaust gas and explosion accidents in the production process of these enterprises. Most of the Chinese chemical industry parks still use traditional air monitoring technologies that requires setting up passive air monitoring collection points at the boundary of enterprises and industrial parks and use the “point” sensor and pollution factors collected by air stations. However, the operation of traditional air monitoring equipment is affected by the prevailing wind conditions, thus the traditional air monitoring equipment and technology is of limited use to conduct monitoring. One of the authors of this manuscript, Weimin Zhang with Jiangsu China‐U.S. Environmental Monitoring Co. Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as EMCUS), with 10 years of has been testing and observing air diffusion law in chemical industrial parks for 10 years and has achieved fruitful success. The best way to truly achieve tracing and prewarning about the air pollution is to conduct timely three‐dimensional dynamic collection of chemical factors and then perform qualitative and quantitative analysis. Based on this theory, EMCUS has abandoned the traditional “point” passive monitoring theories. After a comprehensive analysis and comparison of air quality monitoring technology and equipment around the world, especially several investigations of advanced Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) equipment and software in the United States, EMCUS initiated the three‐dimensional monitoring technology for exhaust gas emissions which fully combined with the current situations of chemical industry parks. During the EcoPartnership project, the stepwise vertical and radial air monitoring technology was fully promoted in Chinese chemical industry parks to generate key emission data.

Noise prediction of chemical industry park based on multi-station Prophet and multivariate LSTM fitting model

With the gradual transformation of chemical industry park to digital and intelligent, various types of environmental data in the park are extremely rich. It has high application value to provide safe production environment by deeply mining environmental data law and providing data support for industrial safety and workers’ health in the park through prediction means. This paper takes the noise data of the chemical industry park as the main research object, and innovatively applies the 3σ principle to the zero-value processing of the noise data, and builds an LSTM model that integrates multivariate information based on the characteristics of the wind direction classification noise data combined with the wind speed and vehicle flow information. The Prophet model integrating multi-site noise information was adopted, and the Multi-PL model was constructed by fitting the above two models to predict the noise. This paper designs and implements a comparative experiment with Kalman filter, BP neural network, Prophet, LSTM, Prophet + LSTM weighted combination prediction model. R2 was used to evaluate the fitting effect of single model in Multi-PL, RMSE and MAE that were used to evaluate the prediction effect of Multi-PL on noise time series. The experimental results show that the RMSE and MAE of the data processed by the 3σ principle are reduced by 32.2% and 23.3% in the multi-station ordered Prophet method, respectively. Compared with the above comparison models, the Multi-PL model prediction method is more stable and accurate. Therefore, the Multi-PL method proposed in this paper can provide a new idea for noise prediction in digital chemical parks.

Investigation on Distribution and Risk Assessment of Volatile Organic Compounds in Surface Water, Sediment, and Soil in a Chemical Industrial Park and Adjacent Area.

The occurrences, distributions, and risks of 55 target volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in water, sediment, sludge, and soil samples taken from a chemical industrial park and the adjacent area were investigated in this study. The Σ55-VOCs concentrations in the water, sediment, sludge, and soil samples were 1.22–5449.21 μg L−1, ND–52.20 ng g−1, 21.53 ng g−1, and ND–11.58 ng g−1, respectively. The main products in this park are medicines, pesticides, and novel materials. As for the species of VOCs, aromatic hydrocarbons were the dominant VOCs in the soil samples, whereas halogenated aliphatic hydrocarbons were the dominant VOCs in the water samples. The VOCs concentrations in water samples collected at different locations varied by 1–3 orders of magnitude, and the average concentration in river water inside the park was obviously higher than that in river water outside the park. However, the risk quotients for most of the VOCs indicated a low risk to the relevant, sensitive aquatic organisms in the river water. The average VOCs concentration in soil from the park was slightly higher than that from the adjacent area. This result showed that the chemical industrial park had a limited impact on the surrounding soil, while the use of pesticides, incomplete combustion of coal and biomass, and automobile exhaust emissions are all potential sources of the VOCs in the environmental soil. The results of this study could be used to evaluate the effects of VOCs emitted from chemical production and transportation in the park on the surrounding environment.

Risk assessments of emerging contaminants in various waters and changes of microbial diversity in sediments from Yangtze River chemical contiguous zone, Eastern China

Over recent decades, increasing chemical contamination has greatly affected aquatic life and human health, even though most contaminants are present at low concentrations. The large-scale chemical industrial parks (CIPs) concentrated in the Yangtze River Delta account for over half of the total in China, and Jiangsu Province occupies one fifth of the Yangtze River Delta. Inevitably, the ecosystems could be affected by these CIPs. In this study, we collected 35 water and 12 sediment samples from the Yangtze River (Taizhou section) surrounding waters adjacent to concentrated CIPs and determined their cumulative chemical levels to be 0.2 to 28.4 μg/L and cumulative detections to be 11 to 39 contaminants with a median of 20 contaminants. 61 out of 153 screened chemicals were detected from at least one sampling site, and 6 contaminants, mostly semi-volatile organic compounds, appeared at all sites. Among these detected chemicals, di-n-octyl phthalate and dibutyl phthalate were at the highest levels. Ecological assessment revealed that 4-chloroaniline, phenol and dibutyl phthalate possibly would induce adverse effects on Yangtze River (Taizhou) ecosystems. Further aided with an evaluation of integrated biomarker response (IBR) index, it was found that site W06 (downstream of Binjiang CIP wastewater inlet) was the location in greatest need of urgent action. As a result, the microbial diversity of sediments in the Yangtze River mainstream was significantly higher than that of tributaries, where CIPs wastewater entered.

Dynamic responses and damage of storage tanks under the coupling effect of blast wave and fragment impact

Blast wave and fragment are two main types of physical damage effects representing a significant threat to storage tank structures in chemical industrial parks. Compared with the effect of only blast wave or fragment, the coupling effect of them may cause more severe consequences and is worthy of study. A numerical study of the dynamic responses and damage of a vertical storage tank subjected to the coupling effect of blast wave and fragment is conducted based on a typical accident. The simulation results reveal that stress-concentration and rapid increase of the stress exist in the impacted region of the storage tank under the coupling effect, which leads to the structural damage of the tank exhibiting different failure modes. The coupling effect is significantly apparent following a dramatic increase of the plastic strain, and the damage of the storage tank is further aggravated. From the displacement response and energy absorption, the overall damage of the storage tank subjected to the coupling effect is more severe than that caused by blast wave and fragment separately, which also indicates that the coupling effect is an enhanced damage effect. Besides, the contribution of blast wave and fragment to the coupling effect depends on scaled distance. The results of the study help reveal the coupling effect of blast wave and fragment and prevent domino accidents caused by the coupling effect.

Source term estimation with deficient sensors: Error analysis and mobile station route design

Air pollution monitoring for chemical industrial parks suffers from sensor deficiency. To address this problem, this work focuses on mobile monitoring station solutions to complement the fixed measurement deficiency. Flexibility in measurement location makes the mobile solution advantageous over fixed stations not only in providing sufficient number of measurements to satisfy the traceability condition, but also in the possibility to design monitoring route optimally according to real-time wind directions. By taking these advantages, this work proposes a new method for optimal mobile route design so that the inference of uncertainties on the accuracy of source rate estimation is minimized. Based on the linear relationship between the concentration measurements and source emission rates, the effect of measurement noises on the estimation error is derived as an amplification factor through numerical analysis, then, the optimal monitoring route can be determined by minimizing the amplification. Numerical and real case studies are presented to test the performance of the method. The results suggest that the approach proposed can effectively improve the performance of source rate estimation by optimally choosing the monitoring route.

Characteristics and health risks of benzene series and halocarbons near a typical chemical industrial park

Health risks of typical benzene series and halocarbons (BSHs) in a densely populated area near a large-scale chemical industrial park were investigated. Ambient and indoor air and tap water samples were collected in summer and winter; and the concentration characteristics, sources, and exposure risks of typical BSH species, including five benzene series (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, o-xylene, m,p-xylene) and five halocarbons (dichloromethane, trichloromethane, trichloroethylene, tetrachloromethane, and tetrachloroethylene), were analysed. The total mean concentrations of BSHs were 53.32 μg m−3, 36.29 μg m−3, and 26.88 μg L−1 in indoor air, ambient air, and tap water, respectively. Halocarbons dominated the total BSHs with concentrations relatively higher than those in many other industrial areas. Industrial solvent use, industrial processes, and vehicle exhaust emissions were the principal sources of BSHs in ambient air. The use of household products (e.g., detergents and pesticides) was the principal source of indoor BSHs. Inhalation is the primary human exposure route. Ingestion of drinking water was also an important exposure route but had less impact than inhalation. Lifetime non-cancer risks of individual and cumulative BSHs were below the threshold (HQ = 1), indicating no significant lifetime non-cancer risks in the study area. However, tetrachloromethane, benzene, trichloromethane, ethylbenzene, and trichloroethylene showed potential lifetime cancer risk. The cumulative lifetime cancer risks exceeded the tolerable benchmark (1 × 10−4), indicating a lifetime cancer risk of BSHs to residents near the chemical industry park. This study provides valuable information for the management of public health in chemical industrial parks.

A decade advance in eco-efficiency and cost-benefits of emissions reduction targeting fine chemical manufacturers

Fine chemical industry, characterized of small scale, large heterogeneity, and high added value, is the most technology-intensive and dynamic sub-sector in chemical industry, but also has much high environmental factor in production. This study aims to explore green development pathways of about 60 fine chemicals manufacturers in a typical fine chemical industrial park with an annual output of 15 billion USD in China. We analyzed eco-efficiency and cost-benefits of emissions reduction of the park during 2011–2019 from multiple perspectives, by integrating decoupling index, data envelopment analysis, and linear econometric model. The key findings are: (1) the fine chemical industry has witnessed a volatile paradigm of absolute decoupling between economic growth and environmental pressure during the past decade, with a decoupling index of −2.2-12.4; (2) variation of eco-efficiency between benchmark enterprises and majority of enterprises are remarkable, at an average scope of 0.23–0.35, among which 77%–85% enterprises under-performed the average; and pharmaceutics production in particular needs a leapfrog to improve its performance substantially because 84%–95% of them were below the average; (3) pollutants emission plays a decisive role in affecting enterprises’ eco-efficiency, and water pollutants work more in first half decade and air pollutants overturn in the second half; and (4) the marginal effect of control investment on water pollutants reductions has declined in 2019 by 66% (chemical oxygen demand (COD)) and 70% (ammonia nitrogen compounds (NH3–N)) compared with those of 2012; however, air pollutants reductions marginal effect is still in climb stage in 2019 by 607% (sulfur dioxide (SO2)) and 17% (nitrogen oxides (NOx)) compared with those in 2018. Fine chemical manufacturers are supposed to enforce a paradigm shift from end-of-pipe to systematic emissions control due to the decline trend of marginal cost-benefits on emissions reduction subsequently.

Characterization of Black Carbon and Its Correlations with VOCs in the Northern Region of Hangzhou Bay in Shanghai, China

Ozone and PM2.5 (all particulate matter with diameter of 2.5 µm or smaller) are currently two disturbing environmental issues in most cities of China. Black carbon (BC), mainly from incomplete combustion, is one of the most important components of PM2.5 because it can absorb light and contribute to haze pollution and global warming. Meanwhile, volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have become a major air pollutant due to their association with haze, ozone (O3), global warming and human health by direct or indirect processes. In this study, one year-long observation campaign of BC, VOCs and other conventional air pollutants was conducted in the Northern Region of the Hangzhou Bay (NRHB) in Shanghai, China. The results indicated that higher concentration of BC mainly occurred in the autumn and winter, especially in December. In December, higher BC concentrations were found when the air mass came from northwest where there is an important local freeway, or southwest where some adjacent southwest chemical industrial parks are located. Different from the characteristics of BC in urban areas reported by previous studies, the diurnal variation of BC exhibited three peaks, two of which coincided with the morning and evening rush hours which are related to the heavy diesel traffic from a nearby freeway, and the third peak was often found late at night, around 2 am, which might be associated with abnormal emissions from an industrial park or marine traffic in the ocean waterway. BC had weakly negative correlation with O3 and NO, and a strongly positive correlation with PM2.5, SO2, NO2 and NOx, which implies that some incomplete combustion sources might occur in the nearby regions. With regard to VOCs, BC had a strong positive correlation with alkane, alkenes, alkynes, aromatic and non-sulfur VOCs, particularly with aromatic organic matter. Unlike the stronger correlation with aromatics in the morning rush hours, a stronger correlation between BC and alkenes and alkynes during the evening rush hour was observed. The relationships between BC and VOCs, particularly with some specific VOCs species related to the neighboring chemical industrial park, demonstrated that the contribution of the surrounding chemical industrial parks to BC should not be neglected.

Stationary monitoring and source apportionment of VOCs in a chemical industrial park by combining rapid direct-inlet MSs with a GC-FID/MS

Fast and comprehensive monitoring of VOCs, required for air quality management in large-scale chemical industrial parks in China, cannot be accomplished by stationary measurements using conventional GC-FID or GC–MS alone due to their low temporal resolutions and limited detectable ranges. Novel direct-inlet mass spectrometry (DI-MS) has been widely applied for real-time monitoring of VOCs. To verify its applicability in industrial settings, high mass-resolution proton-transfer-reaction time-of-flight MS (HMR-PTR-TOFMS), single-photon ionization time-of-flight MS (SPI-TOFMS), together with online GC-FID/MS were simultaneously deployed at the boundary of one of the largest chemical industrial parks in eastern China. Aromatics, acetonitrile, acetic acid, ethyl acetate, aliphatic hydrocarbons, 1,2-dichloroethane, and acetone were detected as the main pollutants. These three instruments detected 12 common species, among which ethyl acetate, toluene, C8-aromatics, and methyl ethyl ketone showed similar time series and levels. Acetone, benzene, chlorobenzene, styrene, and C9-aromatics showed only similar time series. The HMR-PTR-TOFMS uniquely detected 14 species, mainly oxidized VOCs, nitriles, and amines, which greatly helps acknowledge the pollutants in the chemical industrial area. Positive matrix factorization, using the HMR-PTR-TOFMS and GC-FID/MS datasets, was used to identify eight sources. Four of the identified sources were mainly detected by the HMR-PTR-TOFMS, with pollutants mainly comprised of nitriles, amines, carbonyls, and organic acids, most of which were hazardous and/or odorous. These four sources accounted for 41.5% and 33.2% of the total VOCs and ozone formation potential, respectively. The complementary nature of GC-FID/MS and HMR-PTR-TOFMS in VOC source apportionment in industrial settings is of great practical use for advanced VOCs abatement. Thus, the high mass resolution DI-MSs are suggested to be a supplementary measurement for fence-line monitoring. Although with a relatively short period attempt, this study has wide implications for the fence-line stationary observational modes and source apportion methods combining with traditional observations.

Source term estimation with deficient sensors: Traceability and an equivalent source approach

In air pollution monitoring, source term estimation (STE) is a problem to inversely estimate the source parameters, such as their locations and emission rates, with available information of meteorology, ground geometry, as well as concentration measurements and their locations. For chemical industrial parks (CIPs), a major challenge of the estimation is the ill-posedness caused by the lack of sufficient measurements to match a vast number of undetermined source parameters. This ill-posedness results in incapacity in estimating unique solution for unknown source parameters, hence they are untraceable. In this paper, a theoretical definition of traceability is introduced to give a general criterion to determine whether a STE problem has a unique solution. This is derived from an atmospheric transport and dispersion model with description of linear sensitivity of measurements to source parameters. Based on this traceability criterion, an equivalent source method to convert an untraceable problem to traceable is proposed. The performance of this method is evaluated with a numerically simulated case whose configuration is based on information collected from a CIP in Shangyu, China. The results suggest that traceability is vital to STE problems. The method is effective for solving daily STE problems with sensor deficiency encountered in CIPs.

The Enlightenment on Emergency Management of Chemical Parks

Under the trend of large-scale industrial production, the construction of chemical parks is booming. With the hot topic in the field of safety accidents in chemical parks, the public awareness of emergency management has increased remarkably. In response to the current fragmentation dilemma of chemical industry in China, it is necessary to improve the emergency management mechanism. In the paper, four evaluation strategies are proposed on the basis of existing research for the construction of emergency management system in China Chemical Industry Park.

Study of the situation deduction of a domino accident caused by overpressure in LPG storage tank area

The production and storage of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is gradually becoming larger and more intensive, which greatly increases the risk of the domino effect of an explosion accident in a storage tank area while improving production and management efficiency. This paper describes the construction of the domino effect scene of an explosion accident in an LPG storage tank area, the analysis of the characteristics of the LPG tank explosion shock wave and the target storage tank failure, and the creation of an ANSYS numerical model to derive the development trend and expansion law of the domino accident in the LPG storage tank area. The research showed that: 400 m3 tank T1 explosion shock waves spread to T2, T4, T5, T3, and T6, and the tank overpressures of 303 kPa, 303 kPa, 172 kPa, 81 kPa, and 61 kPa respectively. The critical values of the target storage tank failure overpressure-range threshold were 70 kPa and 60 m. After the explosion of the initial unit T1 tank, at 38 ms, the T2 and T4 storage tanks failed and exploded; at 56 ms, the T5 storage tank exploded for the third time; at 82 ms, the T3 storage tank exploded for the fourth time; and at 102 ms, the T6 storage tank exploded for the fifth time. With the increase of explosion sources, the failure overpressure of the target storage tank increased, and the interval between explosions continuously shortened, which reflected the expansion effect of the domino accident. The domino accident situation deduction in the LPG storage tank area provided a scientific basis for the safety layout, accident prevention and control, emergency rescue, and management of a chemical industry park.

System dynamics research of non-adaptive evacuation psychology in toxic gas leakage emergencies of chemical park

Chemical industry park plays an important role in optimizing the allocation of resources, but an emergency may make a great deal of personnel casualty and property loss. Many casualties are not the result of accidents but are caused by extreme behavior because of the non-adaptive psychology of the evacuees. Panic is one of the non-adaptive psychological behaviors during an evacuation, which is influenced by a variety of factors. Based on the consideration of the disaster environment and the evolution of crowd emotion, a system dynamics model of panic spread is established by using Anylogic software, and simulation experiments are carried out for different disaster severity, visibility, and groups. The results show that the number of people with severe panic increase when visibility decreases or disaster diffuses. Besides, the appropriate proportion of groups can effectively reduce the cooling time of crowd and ease the fears. However, continue to increase the number of groups has no significant effect on the panic control. This work can provide some reasonable guidance for regional emergency evacuation in chemical park.

Quantifying the life cycle environmental impacts of water pollution control in a typical chemical industrial park in China

AbstractAs the most important production space for the development of chemical industry in China, chemical industrial parks (CIPs) are facing a new challenge of water pollution prevention and control, in addition to those posed by traditional and emerging pollutants. It is thus important to systematically reveal the compositewater‐environmental impact of CIPs for contributing to the sustainable development of the chemical industry. CIPs have the issue of intensive wastewater generation characterized by complex pollutant components and high pollution loads. Thus, establishing an environmentally friendly wastewater treatment system has always been a major challenge for CIPs. China has developed many CIPs and the two‐stage wastewater treatment system is widely employed in practice, that is, in‐plant wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in individual enterprises followed by centralized WWTPs in parks. Since the CIP wastewater emission limits are continuously improved, a comprehensive evaluation of the environmental impacts of the in‐use wastewater treatment system will be insightful for future policy making. This study employed life cycle assessment (LCA) to reveal the life cycle environmental impact of the two‐stage wastewater treatment system in a typical CIP. We found that the life cycle environmental impacts of the whole system mainly stem from the in‐plant WWTPs of chemical manufacturers because of chemicals and electricity consumed in the multi‐stage advanced oxidation technologies, while the increase of human toxicity potential and marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential are primarily due to sludge incineration. Three scenarios targeting the reduction of environmental impacts were proposed based on the LCA results. We evaluated the pollution mitigation potential, which can reach at most 8% of the original measured impacts. Finally, from the perspective of systematic thinking, four policy implications for improving the water management system of CIPs were proposed.