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Extra considerations and precautions are needed beyond the requirements of codes and standards
Incorporating fire safety into plant design takes on two fundamental goals: to prevent the occurrence of fire and to protect the initially uninvolved piping and equipment long enough for operations personnel to perform their duties and for emergency responders to get the fire under control. While it is impractical to completely eliminate the potential risk of an accidental fire in a complex process-plant facility that is expected to handle and process hazardous chemicals, it is reasonable to assume that certain aspects of design can be incorporated to reduce that risk.
Designing facilities that use and store hazardous chemicals requires a demanding set of requirements, at times beyond what can practically be written into industry codes and standards. It is ultimately the responsibility of the engineer of record (EOR) and the owner to fill in those blanks and to read between the lines of the adopted codes and standards to create a safe operating environment, one that minimizes the opportunity for fire and its uncontrolled spread and damage.
This article will not delve into the various trigger mechanisms of how a fire might get started in a process facility, but will instead discuss containment and control of the fuel component of a fire that resides in piping systems that contain combustible, explosive or flammable fluids.
In the design of piping systems containing such fluids, there are critical aspects that need additional considerations beyond those involved in the design of piping systems containing non-hazardous fluids. There are two key safety aspects that need to be incorporated into the design, namely system integrity and fire safety.
System integrity
System integrity describes an expectation of engineering that is integrated into the design of a piping system in which the selected material of construction (MOC), system joint design, valve selection, examination requirements, design, and installation have all been engineered and performed in a manner that instills the proper degree of integrity into a piping system. While this approach is certainly needed for the piping design of so-called normal fluid service it is absolutely critical for hazardous fluid systems.
The design of any piping system, hazardous or non-hazardous, is based, in large part, on regulations and industry...