Event
- Event ID
- 666
- Quality
- Description
- A fire in a first stage 'pygas' (pyrolysis of gasoline) hydrogenation of a naphtha cracker was caused by escape of a mixture of gasoline, hydrogen and nickel catalyst through a crack in the wall of the reactor. Investigation showed that the crack was caused by a brief local temperature excursion, explained by a local disturbance and heat removal, attributed to a runaway reaction during the start-up (7 days previously) initiated by sudden increase in fresh feed added to the reactor. Excessive formation of carbon-like products impeded the liquid distribution.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Date
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- Leak, runaway reaction and crack
Facility
- Application
- Petrochemical Industry
- Sub-application
- hydrotreatment
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- cracker and reactors and reaction equipment
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
- Unknown (No additional details provided)
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas-solid mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2,
naphta,
nickel catalyst - Presumed ignition source
- Catalytic reaction
References
- Reference & weblink
Event description extracted from the UK database ICHEME in PDF.<br />
The <br />
https://www.icheme.org/knowledge/safety-centre/resources/accident-data/ <br />
(accessed October 2020)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- ICHEME
