Event
- Event ID
- 51
- Quality
- Description
- An explosion at a refinery happened inside a hydrogen heater when a hydrogen line ruptured.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Heat Exchanger (Pipe)
- How was it involved?
- Internal Explosion (H2-Air Mixture)
- Initiating cause
- Material Degradation (Generic)
- Root causes
- Unknown (No additional details provided)
Facility
- Application
- Petrochemical Industry
- Sub-application
- Generic refinery process
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- unknown
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
- Unknown (No additional details provided)
- Description of the facility/unit/process/substances
- DESCRIPTION OF THE PROCESSES
The ' hydrogen heater' affectted by the incident was probably the fired heater used to pre-heat the feedstock to a refinery process such as a hydron-cracker or hydro-desuplphurisation unit (see for examle HIAD_656).
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 1
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Post-event summary
- One injured worker. No off-site impact.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
- Rupture of hydrogen or process gases tubes in pre-heaters /heat-exchangers / fired heaters is a recurrent event up to recent times. This is not surprising, considering the high temperatures and pressures involved. The most common causes are materials degradations due to manufacturing defects and operative stresses. Ruptures tend to happen during operative transients, which may cause over-heating due to reduction of flows. When the releases occur also in presence of naked flames, as in fired heaters, which use conventional fuels burners, ignition and explosion in the confined of the heater box is ensured. Nevertheless, due to sturdy heater constructions, it rarely happens that damage extends to the outside environment.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Open flame
References
- Reference & weblink
KSLA news od 03 March 2004<br />
https://www.ksla.com/story/1684394/explosion-at-shreveport-refinery-inj… />
(accessed Decemebr 2023)HIAD 1.0 reporting template (Original source unavailable).
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- News
