Archive for the ‘Failure Data’ Category
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Below is summary (annualized average) of 20-year pipeline incident data from 1990-2009. [Source: Pipeline and Hazardous Material Safety Administration,PHMSA]
[TABLE=15]
PHMSA defines Significant Incidents as those incidents reported by pipeline operators when any of the following specifically defined consequences occur:
fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization
$50,000 or more in total costs, measured in 1984 dollars
Highly ...
Posted in Chemical Accidents, Failure Data, Incidents, Pipelines | No Comments »
Wednesday, July 14th, 2010
Natural gas pipelines have caused incidents leading to fatalities, injuries, and property damages.
To be precise, there have been an average of 50 serious gas pipeline incidents every year in the U.S. between 1990-2009 (Source: http://primis.phmsa.dot.gov/comm/reports/safety/SerPSI.html?nocache=4823) resulting in more than 300 fatalities. Majority of the reported gas incidents have occurred on the gas ...
Posted in Failure Data, Inherent Safety, Natural Gas Pipelines | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
The major cause of natural gas pipeline rupture is not corrosion or material defect but external damage.
External damage is the damage to pipeline during digging, pilling, ground work, etc. by heavy equipment such as anchor, bulldozer, excavator, or plough. Moreover typically the external damage is from third party construction activities ...
Posted in Failure Data, LNG, Natural Gas Pipelines | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 12th, 2009
An existing equipment in a refinery may display flaws/damages that either existed during manufacturing or were induced during service. Let us briefly look at pre-service flaws and service-induced deterioration.
Pre-Service Flaws
Equipment flaws from pre-service lifetime are often discovered during in-service inspection because in-service inspection techniques are much detailed than during original ...
Posted in Failure Data, Reliability | No Comments »
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
How would you answer the following question:
Is refinery A safer than refinery B?
I know a few of you would recommend quantifying risks in each refinery. This will enable us to estimate how many fatalities (on-site and off-site) can occur in the two refineries. We can thus use the predicted ...
Posted in Consequence Modeling, Failure Data, Risk Analysis | 9 Comments »
Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Following the release of natural gas, it can be ignited resulting in fire which in turn can potentially result in an explosion. So how likely will a gas release ignite?If you are interested in the major failure modes for natural gas transmission pipelines reported, please refer to an earlier post ...
Posted in Failure Data, Fires and explosions, Natural Gas Pipelines | No Comments »
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
I recently came across a report from European Gas Pipeline Incident Data Group (EGIG) titled "Safety Performance Determines The Acceptability of Cross Country Gas Transmission Systems". The paper presents incident data contributed by six European gas transmission operators over a 30-year period of 1970-2001.
An incident within this failure database implies ...
Posted in Failure Data, Fires and explosions, Natural Gas Pipelines | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
It is estimated that there are more than 500,000 Above ground storage tanks (ASTs) in the U.S. These tanks can leak gradually (more likely) or may collapse suddenly (low probability). The loss of tank content can lead to water contamination or may lead to a fire in case of a ...
Posted in Failure Data, Inspection & Maintenance, Process Safety, Storage Tanks | 3 Comments »
