Event
- Event ID
- 626
- Quality
- Description
- A tube in a hydrorefiner heater ruptured resulting in an extensive fire inside and outside the furnace. The main fire in the furnace was extinguished within 15 minutes and the escaping gas / vapour release from the ruptured tubes allowed to burn under controlled conditions. There were no injuries to personnel but the furnace suffered damage estimated at £10,000 (1973).
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Fire (No additional details provided)
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Heat Exchanger (Pipe)
- How was it involved?
- Rupture & Formation Of A Flammable H2-Hc-Air Mixture
- Initiating cause
- Over-Heating
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The investigations revealed that during changes in operating conditions a cold circulation start-up valve was opened by mistake resulting in liquid feed/hydrogen starvation of the heater tubes for a period of 35 minutes and eventual rupture of the tube with massive release of hydrogen and hydrocarbon vapours.
Facility
- Application
- Petrochemical Industry
- Sub-application
- Hydrodesulphurisation process
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- heater, hydrotreatement furnace
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Currency
- UK£
- Property loss (onsite)
- 10000
- Post-event summary
- No injuries to personnel.
The furnace suffered damage estimated at £10,000 (1973), including four distorted tubes and certain refractory damage. Some cabling, electrical and instrument fittings on the outside of the heater were also badly burnt.
Lesson Learnt
- Corrective Measures
1. Keep the 4" cold circulation start up valve locked in the `shut' position when the unit is on-stream and attach a `Danger, Valve Not to be Opened' tag to the valve wheel.
2. Fit tube skin thermocouples with maximum temperature alarms to the furnace to give warning of overheating.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2, hydrocarbons
- Presumed ignition source
- Open flame
References
- Reference & weblink
Event description extracted from the UK database ICHEME in PDF<br />
<br />
https://www.icheme.org/knowledge/safety-centre/resources/accident-data/… />
(accessed October 2020)<br />
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- ICHEME
