Safety System Fire Analysis - How can fire challenge the safe operation of a facility? And how can it be established whether a fire can cause a facility/process to enter an unsafe state

摘要

The above questions are fundamental in determining whether facilities are capable of operating safely under the adverse conditions encountered during a fire. Not only can a fire prevent the correct operation of safety systems or protection measures (e.g. alarms and automatic shutdown on equipment) installed on a facility, it has the potential to initiate a major incident. There are additional issues with regards to fire and explosion on facilities such as: 1. Are engineers and operators that work on these facilities confident that the safety systems installed, will function correctly in the event of a fire? 2. Are safety systems protected from fire? 3. Do facilities segregate safety systems to prevent common cause failures throughout to prevent fire undermining safety? 4. In the event of a fire would safety system faults/failures be revealed? 5. Could the safety system's response to a fire cause further operational or emergency shutdown issues? To establish whether a fire could cause a facility/process to enter an unsafe state, detailed analysis of the facility's fire prevention and mitigation provisions should be completed. This analysis will determine whether the effects of fire could have detrimental effects on the facility's ability to operate safely and establish whether a facility could be shut down in a systematic and controlled manner (including in an emergency), even in the presence of a credible fire. It is recognised that most hazard studies consider the loss of utilities and control, hence should consider the loss of safety systems but such studies rarely justify the expected outcomes in the event of the fire on a facility. It should be recognised that fire is a cause of common failure of equipment if it is co-located and the questions posed above are not always considered. On the basis of the safety systems fire analysis, the robustness of the basic process control and safety systems engineering design and their effectiveness can be confirmed, and the requirements for emergency response can be demonstrated. This paper will provide practical examples of how the effects of fire on safety systems have been analysed, examples of improvements emanating from analysis work and the overall benefit of such an analysis.