Influence of safety barriers on probability of domino effect triggerred by pool fire in tank farm

Abstract

With the enlargement and intensification of oil storages, the technologies and equipment used in the tank farm are quite complicated. Hence, once any fire accident occurs, the domino effect may be triggered with catastrophic consequences. In order to reduce the impact of oil storage accidents on the surrounding personnel and environment, the model of safety barrier was established with the event tree and Bayesian network method by considering the performance of three types of safety barrier, including the active, passive, emergency and response measures, and the probability of the domino effect was evaluated quantitatively. The results show that: the multi-layer safety barriers can reduce the probability of domino effect by 3 to 7 orders of magnitude and the probability of the multi-level domino effect to a greater extent. Besides, the passive protection barrier is the most effective, followed by the emergency and response measures, and the active barrier is the least effective. Generally, the research results can provide some guidance for reducing the damage and impact of regional accidents in the areas where multiple devices are concentrated.

Keywords

• oil tank
• domino effect
• safety barriers
• event tree
• bayesian network
• pool fire