Investigation of Ammonia Storage Consequence Modeling in Kermanshah Petrochemical Complex

Safety plays an important role in all phases of chemical processes design. In order to ensure the safety and environmental issues and also to minimize the future changes in process and equipments due to safety problems, safety should be considered in preliminary studies of designing. Ammonia is a highly toxic gas and it forms an explosive combination when exposed to air. moreover, risk potential increases in ammonia production units due to high pressure and temperature operating conditions. All the mentioned problems indicate the importance of safety and process hazards investigation in such a unit. In order to manage risks in process units, it is necessary to identify and evaluate hazards. The next step will be calculating the probability of accurance, intensity and consequences of undesirable accidents so that they can be used in risk evaluation. Investigating the intensity of the consequences of probable accidents is known as "Consequence Modeling". In fact, consequence modeling is the third step of the four step risk evaluation. The main purpose of this paper is the implementation of new methods of consequence modeling in order to analyse and identify the outcomes of release, dispersion, firing and explosion in ammonia storage tank in Kermanshah petrochemical complex using ALOHA software. Improper location of emergency and exit doors, inappropriate location of ammonia storage tank, unsafe place of central control room, laboratory and adjacent villages and cities within a radiuse of 10 Km, are some results of this modeling.