In recent years, the demand for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) has increased in tandem with the expansion of industries and population. To provide an overview of the potential risks in an LPG bottling facility, there is a high probability of accidents during handling and storage, and numerous dangers are encountered during storage and transport. Risk assessment is required by law for all Chemical and Petrochemical Industries. In this case study, everything that could cause damage to People, Property, and Environment was thoroughly analyzed so that it can be determined whether the precautions taken are sufficient or whether further improvement is necessary.
Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOCL) has an LPG bottling plant in Tagadi Village on Budhel Ghogha Road in Bhavnagar district, Gujarat. The plant was commissioned in 1970. The LPG Facility occupies a total area of 76 acres. The plant’s filling capacity is 60 TMTPA.
Bulk LPG is delivered to IOCL LPG Bottling Plant via LPG tank vehicles. LPG is stored in 1400 MT Horton Sphere and 150 MT Projectile Tanks, and it is packaged in various capacities of cylinders. LPG cylinders are filled and delivered by means of road transport. Tanker offloading takes place in tank truck decantation shed.
IOCL has commissioned iFluids Engineering to conduct a Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) for Bhavnagar LPG bottling plant in Gujarat.
The QRA study assesses personnel risk from unintentional release of hazardous materials from loss of containment scenarios in Industrial Plants and shows that individual risks are within the usual acceptable range.
- Hazards and Major LOC Events
- Calculating Physical Effects of failure case scenarios
- Quantification Risk
- Confirm that the ALARP principle and UK HSE risk acceptance criteria can minimize risk.
- Suggest Risk-reduction methods to keep hazards within ALARP.
The evaluation will be established on the hazards that may occur during the project’s operations, according to the available information. The scope of work is restricted to the following facilities.
- Bulk LPG receipt using road tankers
- LPG cylinder filling
- LPG cylinder inspection, post-filling corrections, and dispatching
As part of QRA study, hazard scenarios for the project facility were identified, and DNV PHAST software was utilized for consequence analysis. Using DNV SAFETI software, the risk analysis was conducted to acquire risk results in the form of LSIR contours. These risk outcomes were evaluated in accordance with the Risk Acceptance Criteria.
In this study, QRA was used to evaluate the plant layout to reduce the risk without resorting to prohibitively expensive protective systems. The primary phases of QRA are scenario selection, frequency estimation, consequence evaluation, and risk quantification
The aboveground bullets and huge Horton sphere of the plant under this case study makes it intriguing. The entire layout was subjected to QRA, allowing us to examine how the design of the plant has affected the total risk. The goal was to determine whether or not building an LPG bottling plant was an appropriate choice for safety reasons.
- From the Location Specific Individual Risk (LSIR) results, it was depicted that the individual risk fits under the acceptable region.
- From the Societal Risk (SR) results, it was depicted that the SR falls within the acceptable region.
Thus, from the QRA study carried out, the following results can be concluded.
- The Location Specific Individual Risk Per Annum for the people at all risk ranking locations considered for the study lie in the acceptable region.
- The Individual Risk Per Annum for people at all risk ranking locations considered for the study lie in the acceptable region.
- The Societal Risk for Overall population considered for the study falls in the acceptableregion.
HAZOP
The HAZOP study focuses on managing risks and identifies the hazard and the Probability of the consequences of an incident that occurs in the plant and to evaluate the available safeguards to protect people, plant, environment and properties from the impact.
The Objective of HAZOP follows,
1.Identify the Hazards in the facility
2.Identify the cause which is likely lead to consequences/accident occurs in the facility.
3.To provide Recommendations if needed not to prevents the hazards in the facility.
4. HAZOP occasionally identifies items which could improve unit operations and Efficiency in the facility.
The time and resource requirements of HAZOP, particularly for big, complex, or dynamic systems or processes, are one of its key hurdles. A diverse team of experts is needed for HAZOP, and they must invest a lot of time and energy into gathering and analysing data, coming up with scenarios, assessing risks, and making suggestions. Additionally, HAZOP necessitates extensive documentation and communication, which can increase workload and complexity. A HAZOP can be finished in a matter of weeks, months, or even years, depending on the size and complexity of the system or process.
Recommendations should be reported using action-based words (such as Check, Provide, Consider, Ensure, Review etc.), and assigned to specific work groups. Recommendations were not proposed in instance where the HAZOP team believed that the existing safeguards were adequate to manage the potential risks identified to acceptable levels.