Including detonations in industrial safety and risk assessments. (September 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kolbe, M.; Simoes, V.; Salzano, E.
• Is Part Of: Journal of loss prevention in the process industries. Volume 49:Part B(2017)
• Page Start: 171
• Page End: 176
• Publication Date: 2017-09
• Subjects: Detonations -- VCE -- Explosion modeling -- Explosion prediction; Chemical industries -- Safety measures -- Periodicals; 660.2804
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jlp.2017.06.015
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-4230

Abstract

Abstract: The common rift between academia and industry has existed in all fields of engineering. However, ultimately that can be seen as more of a lag; it is not so much a question of academia research, which ends up finding its way into the practical world of industry years if not decades later. On the topic of detonations or Vapor Cloud Explosions (VCE), this is indeed a true statement. A little more than a decade ago the common belief in the chemical process industry was that detonations were not possible unless you had some very reactive process materials such as hydrogen or acetylene. When some industry and consulting experts began to challenge this view, they soon found out that a more common and less reactive process material such as ethylene could in fact be made to detonate as well. The key was that the environment had to be just right for an ignited flame to accelerate and transition to a detonation. In fact, academia had known this since the early 1960s and so the question remains, what else can we learn? Industry has retuned itself and made use of a several common explosion modeling tools which for some can be made to predict detonations. In others, they must be inferred and only very knowledgeable users can determine detonations. This paper will review the basics of detonations, the academic perspective and the industrial applications. Additionally, several of the various and commonly used models for explosion prediction will be reviewed, in the light of detonation. Highlights: The paper highlights a gap that exists in current blast prediction methodologies for midstream and downstream oil and gas installations. The authors point out that the prediction of detonations for many commonly found process fuels is being omitted. Current large scale Vapor Cloud Explosion (VCE) testing that has been carried out by Gexcon US and SRI corroborates the findings of this paper. The paper and experiments illustrate that lower reactivity fuels can in fact detonate in unconfined congested environments like the ones used in developing commonly used blast prediction methodologies.