OCTOBER 2019

Message for Editorial Board:

As the CARE newsletter enters its 2nd Edition of 2019 there are lot of things to look forward to.

Before looking ahead we are very pleased to thank the contributors especially the faculty and

students of the department for their tireless effort towards achieving the objectives. Launching

this October 2019 edition is not a small feat and we had good measure of success with 3 on

time previous issues. The editorial board is striving to provide a high quality safety materials

every time. In addition to the safety matters the newsletter always takes pride in celebrating

the departmental activities conducted in the near past. We hope you will enjoy this current

issue. Looking forward for more inputs from you in future.

A GUEST LECTURE ON ELEMENTS OF SAFETY MANAGEMENT

SYSTEM

A guest lecture on safety in oil and gas industries was conducted. The aim of this lecture was

to aware students the importance of HSE in petrochemical industry. The lecture took place

on August 16th 2019. The guest invited to speak on this topic was Mr. Balaji, working as a

safety officer in Shell Private Limited, Gulf.

OCTOBER 2019

The speaker thoroughly distinguished between permeability and porosity.

The speaker thrown a limelight on top hazards and risks involved at workplace.

The speaker gave information on how the magnetic particle inspection is carried out

with proper procedures.

ATMOSFAIR- 2K19

Swachhta Pakhwada & World Ozone Day Awareness Program

Ministry of Human Resource Development is observing Swachhta Pakhwada 2019 during 1st September

2019 to 15th September 2019. Inspired by the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s impetus on Jal Sanchay, the Jal

Shakti Abhiyan (JSA) is a time-bound, mission-mode water conservation campaign, In connection with

Prime Minister’s Swachhta Pakhwada for Solid waste management & water conservation mission.

In continuation with the aim of creating sustainable environment UPES (University of Petroleum &

Energy Studies,Dehradun) Jal Shakti team has been created which include Dr. Nihal Anwar Siddiqui

Brig Sukpreet Singh Dhillon (Director, Administration UPES),Prasenjit Mondal (Faculty UPES, Dehradun),

,Abhishek Nandan (Faculty UPES, Dehradun),V.Teja,Anupam Das,Juno Reju,Nitty Ann Abraham,Srinivas

,Sai Bhardwaj & Saket Madhav (Students, UPES, Dehradun ) . Jal Shakati team consisting Administration

officers ,Teachers and students visited the village Dunga (Dehradun) on 5th September, with the aim

of spreading awareness on water conservation, rain water harvesting, recharge of ground water and

waste disposal and segregation methods. They also had a team named JAL SHAKTI which jointly adopted

a nearby village, Dunga, and made villagers aware about water recharging , water conservation, solid

waste management and reduction of plastic use.

UPES has always strived for making the world a better place to live in and the institution has always

felicitated the endeavour of man to use the natural resources which are at his disposal, proportionately

and hence allow the future generations to enjoy the fruits of nature too. Man’s supremacy over the

nature has caused destruction of resources that are to be sustained for future generations. UPES has

understood the gravity of the issue and in order to spread awareness among the new generation

GreenUP club of UPES had shouldered upon the responsibility to organize ATMOSFAIR-VI (Swachhta

Pakhwada & World Ozone Day)a student driven environment awareness program.

Green Up is an active club at UPES with a goal of building a greener and sustainably developed

environment and we are proud to say that on the occasion of Swachhta Pakhwada & World Ozone Day,

we have conducted a successful event in a way that helped in creating awareness among the Villagers,

School kids & students of university. The students of UPES have looked deep inside into the nature and

understood that anthropogenic activities enhances wastewater and exploit Plastic waste. We have

understood the prime importance and conducted social awareness programs through mass media and

our students created awareness about wastewater management, Plastic waste and ozone day.

As part of this program, this year, the club successfully conducted several off-campus events, which

constitute to visiting multiple nearby government schools and spreading awareness about child abuse

and personal hygiene.

OCTOBER 2019

Apart from this the club also organised several on campus events like Connections , Poster making, Face

painting, Engineers eye, Photography, Beg borrow plead, Football , Treasure hunt, Football, PUBG, Tug

of war, Logo designing, Dodge.

Valedictory function as a closure to this beautiful venture was scheduled on 16th September 2019.

Certificates and prizes were presented to the winners by chief guest Mr. Kuldeep Kumar Mattu (Lead

auditor of DNV-GL) and special guest Dr. R.P. Badoni (Former scientist at IIP,Dehradun)

All the events were pertaining to the theme’s environment and its protection and ways to prevent earth

from ozone depletion. Entire event was successfully co-ordinated by Abhishek Nandan (Faculty, HSE,

Dehradun) with the help of Prasenjit Mondal, Dr. Bikarama P. Yadav, Dr. S .M Tauseef, Arun P.A, Akshi

K. Singh, Valluru Venkata Krishnakanth, Tabassum Abbasi, V Surendar, Madhuben Sharma, and Dr.

Kanchan Deoli Bahukhandi under the meticulous guidance and stimulus of Dr. Nihal Anwar Siddiqui

(H.O.D, HSE, UPES, Dehradun). & Brig Sukpreet Singh Dhillon (Director, Administration UPES) with the

blessing of Vice-chancellor, UPES.

A BRIEF ON FLIXBOROUGH ACCIDENT

-By Polani Kethan Hothra (M. Tech H.S.E)

Nypro chemical plant, Flixborough, England. Nypro is jointly owned by DSM - 55% (Dutch State Mines)

and UK NCB - 45% (National Coal Board). Nypro chemical plant’s product was Caprolactam which is

used to form Nylon-6. There was an explosion in a chemical plant which was in a city named Flixborough

which was located in north Lincolnshire, England on Saturday, 1 June 1974. At the time of explosion

there were 72-member present among which 28 of them lost their life and 36 were injured. The

situation would have been worse if this incident would have taken place in weekdays, due to the

involvement of more workers. The explosion which took place was equivalent to 15 tons of TNT in term

of dimension. Apart from the on-site work injury there were other loses to around 53 individuals were

recorded as setbacks, while 1,821 houses and 167 shops and industrial facilities endured harm to a

more noteworthy or lesser degree. The plant at which the blast happened was a part of a complex for

the production of nylon, mutually possessed by Dutch State Mines and UK National Coal Board. The

radius of the accident was 6 mile around the plant. It was the biggest explosion to occur in Britain. The

plant, possessed by Nypro UK, created caprolactam, a chemical utilized in the production of nylon.

Nearly two months before the catastrophe, a break was found in one of the reactors. A pipe was

introduced to sidestep the spilling reactor which connect the no.4 reactor with reactor 6 so the plant

could proceed with creation. During the late evening on 1 June 1974 the pipe cracked, and an enormous

amount of cyclohexane spilled from the pipe, framing a vapour cloud which at that point found an

OCTOBER 2019

ignition source. The huge blast pulverized the plant. Eighteen fatalities happened in the Control Room

because of the windows breaking and the rooftop falling. According to the official report of the accident

they found out that the bypass pipe which was installed had failed because of the unanticipated stresses

during the pressure surge. The modification which was made was done without assessing the potential

factor which led to the accident. There was a huge public debate on the safety of the plant.

A BRIEF ON BP TEXAS OIL REFINERY ACCIDENT

-By Akshay Kant Mishra (M. Tech H.S.E)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

“On March 23, 2005 at 1:20pm, BP Texas City Refinery exploded fabricating one of the worst industrial

disasters in the history of U.S.A”. Blasts and fires killed 15 people and injured another 180, agitating the

community and arbitrating in monetary losses surpassing $1.5 billion. “The company incurred

compensation as well as significant property damage and loss of production. The internal BP accident

investigation and the Chemical Safety Board investigation identified a number of factors that

contributed towards the accident.” “Incident occurred during the startup of an isomerization (ISOM)

unit when a Raffinate Splitter tower was overfilled (loss of containment of hydrocarbons), pressure

relief devices opened, resulting in a flammable liquid geyser from a blow-down stack that was not

equipped with a flare system.” The release of flammables gases resulted into an explosion and

subsequent pool fire. The accident resulted from a combination of factors, including design and

operational flaws, technical and organizational flaws and more importantly a weak safety culture. All of

the fatalities occurred in or near office trailers located close to the blow-down drum. Houses were

damaged as far away as three-quarters of a mile from the refinery.

“The BP Texas City facility reserve third-largest position in oil refineries in the United States. Before

1999 Amoco possess the refinery. BP amalgamated with Amoco in 1999 and BP successively took over

operations of the plant.”

ABOUT THE COMPANY – BRITISH PETROLEUM

BP is one of the world’s major international oil and gas companies. It operate or market the products

in more than 80 countries, providing customers with fuel for transportation, energy for heat and light,

and petrochemicals products for daily use items. “In 2000, BP Amoco gained both the US-based oil and

gas company ARCO and the lubricants and speciality chemicals company Burmah Castrol.” Following

the major tie-ups with Amoco, ARCO, Burmah Castrol and others, in July 2000 BP Amoco announced it

would now simply call itself “BP and revealed the ‘Helios’ symbol, a green and yellow sunflower logo

named after the Greek sun god.” The Texas City Refinery is BP’s largest and most complex oil refinery,

with a rated capacity of 460,000 barrels per day and production of up to 11 million gallons of gasoline

a day. “It also makes jet fuels, diesel fuels and chemical feed stocks. The refinery has 30 process units

spread over a 1200 acre site and employs about 1800 permanent BP staff.” “The incident happened on

the ISOM unit and entailed the Raffinate Splitter, Blowdown Drum and Stack. The ISOM unit

metamorphoses low octane blending feeds into higher octane components for blending to unleaded

regular gasoline.” The unit has four parts, Ultrafiner Desulfurizer, Penex Reactor, Vapour Recovery/

Liquid Recycle plus the Raffinate Splitter, which takes a non-aromatic stream from the Aromatics

Recovery Unit (ARU) and bifurcates it into light and heavy components. Many of those injured or killed

were gathered in or around temporary trailers used for supporting turnaround work going nearby the

unit.

OCTOBER 2019

PROCESS IN BP OIL REFINERY:

DESCRIPTION: The ISOM plant at the site was fabricated for the transformation of low octane

hydrocarbons, via different chemical processes, into hydrocarbons with elevated octane ratings which

is supposed to be blended into unleaded gasoline. One unit of ISOM site was a Raffinate Splitter. “During

start-up, heavy liquid Raffinate was pumped into the 50m tall Raffinate Splitter tower. Hefty liquid is

pumped into the tower by the operator at a set feed rate and synchronized by an automatic control.”

The tower operated out of the top of the distillation column with two outputs. The hefty output flowed

through two heat exchangers, firstly to pre-heat the Raffinate feed into the tower, and secondly to cool

down prior being sent to its appointed storage tanks. “The light Raffinate came out from the overhead

of tower as vapours and was passed through a 45m pipe adjacently to the splitter tower, after which it

is passed through a condenser and transfer to the light Raffinate storage tank.” “The light Raffinate pipe

had three safety valves, which unlocked in the event of pressure exceeding an unsafe limit. If safety

valves pops-out, the liquid or vapours would spill over a Blowdown.” “The Blowdown Drum was

designed to “receive, quench and dispose of hydrocarbon and associated liquid” from the Splitter

Tower and through the safety valves in case of operational upsets or shutdowns.”

THE INCIDENT: 40,000 people lives clustered around three giant refineries in which one of them is

BP Texas oil refinery located 56 km of southeast of Houston. “On March 23, 2005, an explosion and fire

occurred at one of the America’s biggest oil refinery in Texas City, Texas. Blast is felt 8 km away and

dozens of people were injured despite rescue operations.” America’s worst industrial disaster in 15

years shatters a close built community. Every second America burns nearly four thousand gallons of

gasoline. The refinery employs approximately 1800 BP workers.

On the incident’s morning, the Raffinate Splitter tower in the refinery’s ISOM unit was restarted after a

maintenance programme. During the startup, operations personnel pumped flammable liquid

hydrocarbons in to the tower for hours without any liquid being removed, being vice versa to start-up

procedure instructions. High alarms and control instrumentation indicated false measurements that

were unable to alert the operators of the increasing level in the tower. Eventually, unknown to the

operations crew, the 52m tall tower was running over and liquid spilled out into the overhead pipe at

the top of the tower.

“The overhead from the side of tower was connected to pressure relief valves located 45m below. As

the pipe was filled with liquid, the pressure below rose instantly from about 20psi to 60psi.” “Three

pressure relief valves opened for few minutes, discharging a huge quantity of flammable liquid to

Blowdown Drum with a vent stack releasing to the atmosphere. The Blowdown Drum and stack run

over with flammable liquid, which led to a geyser like release out the 34m tall stack.” This Blowdown

system was an unsafe design; originally installed in the 1950s, and no flare system was connected to

safely contain liquids and combust flammable vapours released from the process.

The released volatile liquid evaporated as it fell to the ground and produced a flammable vapour cloud.

The most likely source of ignition for the vapour cloud was backfire from an idling diesel pickup truck

located about 8m from the Blowdown Drum. “The 15 employees killed in the explosion were

contractors working in and around temporary trailers that had been previously sited by BP as close as

40m from the Blowdown Drum.”

Editorial Board:

Dr. Nihal Anwar Siddiqui, Dr. S M. Tauseef, Mr. Abhishek Nandan, Mr. Surendar V, Mr. Arun P.A and Dr. Kanchan Bahukandi