Principles of fire and

explosion protection
Dr Syed Shatir A. Syed-Hassan

Health, Safety and

Environment - CGE653

Faculty of Chemical
Engineering
Universiti Teknologi
MARA

 The protection of petroleum

facilities follows the same overall
philosophy that would be applied
to any building or installation.
Basic requirements:
Personnel evacuation
Containment
Isolation
Suppression

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Principles of fire protection

 The fire and explosion protection

engineering design philosophy
can be defined by the following
objectives:
i. Prevent the immediate exposure of
individuals to fire and explosion
hazards.
No facility should be designed such that an
employee or the public could be immediately

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General Philosophy

General Philosophy
. Inherently design safety features at facilities
provides for adequate spacing, arrangement
and segregation of equipment from high
hazard to low hazard.
. The least hazardous process systems should
be used for obtaining the desired product or
production objectives.
. Protective systems are provided to minimize
the effects that may occur from a catastrophic
incident.

iii. Meet the prescriptive and objective

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ii. Provide inherently safe facilities.

iv. Achieve a level of fire and explosion

risk that is acceptable to the
employees, the general public, the
petroleum and related industries,
the local and national government,
and the company itself.
v. Protect the economic interest of the
company for both short and long
range impacts.
vi. Comply with a corporation's

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General Philosophy

 Most facilities are designed around

layers of protection commonly
referred to as Independent Layers of
Protection (ILP).
A protection layer qualifies as an ILP
when one of the following conditions
are met
the protection provided reduces the risk of a
serious event by 100 times
the protective function is provided with a high
degree of availability

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Layers of Protection

Layers of Protection
EMERGENCY RESPONSE

BPCS - Basic process

control

RELIEF
SIS
ALARMS
BPCS

A
U
T
O
M
A
T
I
O
N

Alarms - draw attention

SIS - Safety interlock
system to stop/start
equipment (ESD)
Relief - Prevent excessive
pressure
Containment - Prevent
materials from reaching,
workers, community or
environment
Emergency Response evacuation, fire fighting,
health care, etc.

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CONTAINMENT

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Layers of protection

 Segregation is the grouping of

similar hydrocarbon processes into
the same major area.
The segregated high hazard areas can
also be separated as far as necessary
from other areas of the facility and
the public.
The major facility segregation
categories are process, storage,
loading, flaring, utilities and

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Segregation, Separation
and Arrangement

 The primary design consideration

should be the protection of employees
and the general public from the
effects of an explosion or fire.
The ideal situation for offshore facility
is to locate the accommodation on a
separate installation jacket that is
spaced as far as practical from the
production processes and the process
platform oil or gas pipeline risers.

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Segregation, Separation
and Arrangement

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 A common ignition source is sparks

resulting from static charge buildup
and sudden discharge.
Static charge buildup is a result of
physically separating a poor
conductor from a good conductor or
another poor conductor.
Examples of static charge build up:
Walking across a rug
Removing a sweater

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Control of Ignition Source

Control of Ignition Source

Flowing liquids or gases containing

impurities or particulates
Sprayed liquids
Liquid mixing or blending operations
Moving machinery
Personnel

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The major generators of static

electricity at hydrocarbon facilities
are:

 Static electricity can be

overcome or controlled by
several basic approaches
such as bonding and
grounding.
Bonding tries to achieve a
common electrical potential
on all equipment so that a
charge does not have the
opportunity to accumulate.
Grounding is the process of
electrically connecting one
or more conducting objects
to a ground potential.

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Control of Ignition Source

variables at set points,

which are fixed at some
desired values
Without adequate and
reliable process controls,
an unexpected process
occurrence cannot be
monitored, controlled and
eliminated.
Alarm has an annunciator
and visual indication.
Require analysis by a
person - A plant operator
must decide.

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Control and
Instrumentation
Process control maintains

 An Emergency Shutdown (ESD) system is a

method to rapidly cease the operation of
the process and isolate it from incoming or
going connections or flows to reduce the
likelihood of an unwanted event from
occurring, continuing, or escalating.
Facilities that do not have the capability to
immediately provide an emergency
shutdown should be considered high risks.
Similarly, if the reliability of an ESD system
is very poor.
ESD systems are designed so that several

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Emergency Shutdown
System

 The objectives of fire suppression systems:

i) to provide cooling; ii) to control fire
(prevent it from spreading); ii) to provide
extinguishment of the fire incident.
Some methods of fire suppression
Portable Fire Extinguishers
Sprinkler System
Water Deluge System
Water Spray System
Water Flooding
Steam Smothering
Water Curtains

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Methods of Fire
Suppression

 The most common method of

extinguishing hydrocarbon fires in the
incipient stage.
Portable extinguishers are classified
by expected application on a specific
type of fire (i.e., A, B, C, or D) and the
expected area of suppression.
The four types of fires are grouped
according to the type of material that
is burning

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Portable Fire Extinguishers

 Class A fires include those in which

ordinary combustibles such as wood,
cloth, and paper are burning.
CIass B fires are those in which
flammable liquids, oils, and grease
are burning.
Class C fires are those involving live
electrical equipment.
Class D fires involve combustible
metals such as magnesium,

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Portable Fire Extinguishers

Extinguishers for Class A Fires

Class A fire extinguishers are usually
water based. Water provides a heatabsorbing (cooling) effect on the
burning material to extinguish the
fire.
Pressurized water extinguishers use
air under pressure to expel the water.

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Portable Fire Extinguishers

Extinguishers for Class B Fires

Class B fires are put out by excluding
air, by slowing down the release of
flammable vapors, or by interrupting
the chain reaction of the combustion.
Three types of extinguishing agents:
carbon dioxide, dry chemical, and
foamwater.

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Portable Fire Extinguishers

Portable Fire Extinguishers

The extinguishing agent in a class C fire
extinguisher must be electrically nonconductive.
Both carbon dioxide and dry chemicals can
be used in electrical fires.

Extinguishers for Class D Fires

A heat-absorbing extinguishing medium is
needed for fires in combustible metals.
Also, the extinguishing medium must not
react with the burning metal.

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Extinguishers for Class C Fires

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 Commonly provided to indoor occupancies,

such as warehouses, offices, etc.
Considered essentially 100% effective for
fire suppression if properly maintained and
the hazard has not changed since the
original design.
Activated by the heat of the fire melting a
tension loaded cap at the sprinkler head.
Cap melts or falls away releasing water
from the pipe distribution network. Thus
they do not activate until a fire condition is
absolutely real.

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Sprinkler Systems

 Should generally be activated by automatic

means. Activation by manual means
defeats the objective of installing a deluge
system.
Most systems provided at petroleum
facilities are typically activated by a heat
detection.

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Water Deluge System

 Water flooding is the principle to

inject water into the interior of a
storage tank for the purposes of
preventing flammable or combustible
liquids from being released from a
leakage point or to extinguish a fire.
The principle involves fill a vessel or
tank so that the lighter density
hydrocarbon fluids float on the water
and only water is released from the

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Water Flooding

 Typically limited to fires that might

occur as a result of a tube leak in a
furnace or heater.
The steam is most effective in
smothering fires when they are
located in relatively small confined
areas.
Steam extinguishes fire by the
exclusion of free air and the reduction
of available oxygen content to the

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Steam Smothering

Summary
Layers of protection (6 layers)

Alarms
Blinking light (visual indicator)

Emergency shutdown system

Fire suppression methods

Fire extinguisher
Sprinkler
Water deluge system
Water flooding
Steam smothering

Evacuation, fire fighting, health care etc.

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Segregation, separation and arrangement

Control of ignition point
Control and instrumentation