Investigation on Effect of Distance between Tanks on Fire Spread in Oil Refinery

• Main Author: Riswan, Fatin Nabilah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: IRC 2015
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/15703/1/Dissertation.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/15703/

Safety has become the priority for oil and gas industry in order to protect workforce, property and country’s economy. In spite of the oil industry's excellent efforts in the field of fire prevention, it is still necessary to provide fire protection. Oil refinery deals with large amount of hydrocarbons which are highly flammable. Therefore, a reliable and functional fire fighting system is important to ensure safety of the refinery. This research investigates the effect of distance between tanks on fire spread. Hydrocarbon fire of burning tanks will radiate heat to adjacent tank even when fire fighting operation is in progress. In general, some may think that as long as the fire fighting operation is in progress, the fire will be under control. However, in real situation when fire fighting is in progress, the heat release rate of the fuel will decreases but it will continue radiating heat to adjacent tanks which may cause fire spread. Defining the behaviour and heat release rate of hydrocarbon fire when there is fire fighting operation is in progress relating in distance of tanks. This study also adapt fire safety on performance based design where Fire Dynamic Simulator CFD software will be used to study the safe boundary distance of tanks containing hydrocarbon. It has been found from the simulation that when fire fighting operation in progress, fire spread between tanks at distance of 3 meter and 5 meter. However, fire did not spread when distance is 7 meter.