Review Article Open Access

Study and Analysis of Storage Tank Hazards and its Mitigation Measures Using Bow Tie Diagram

Abstract

Petroleum and petrochemical industry may lead to hazard condition by means of fire, explosion, explosive chemical noise, electrical shock and etc. which result in health, environment and economic loss. These hazards can be a result of the presence of cleaning chemicals, hazardous gases, improper or insufficient lockout-tag out, vapors, fumes, dusts, or excessive heat or cold. Atmospheric storage tank fire very common in industrial facilities. In this work various accidents of storage tanks that taken place in Industrial facilities in Asia over last 40 years. Bowtie Diagram is applied to depict causes and factors responsible which led to various types of storage tank fires. Prevention and mitigation measures are also provided to help operating engineers handling similar types of situations in the future. The results show that 70% of accidents occurred in oil terminals or storage, petroleum refineries and Fire and explosion account for 90% of the accidents. There were accidents caused by lightning, by human errors, including poor operations and maintenance. Other causes were equipment failure, static electricity, sabotage, crack and rupture, leak and line rupture, open flames, etc. Most of these accidents would have been avoided if proper safety management programs, good engineering practices implemented.

Vaibhav Sharma*, Abhishek Nandan and Nihal Anwar Siddiqui

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