Event
- Event ID
- 666
- Quality
- Description
A fire in a first stage 'pygas' (pyrolysis of gasoline) hydrogenation of a naphtha cracker was caused by escape of a mixture of gasoline, hydrogen and nickel catalyst through a crack in the wall of the reactor. Investigation showed that the crack was caused by a brief local temperature excursion, explained by a local disturbance and heat removal, attributed to a runaway reaction during the start-up (7 days previously) initiated by sudden increase in fresh feed added to the reactor. Excessive formation of carbon-like products impeded the liquid distribution.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- fire
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- Unknown
- Date
- Component involved
- reactor / oven / furnace / test chamber
- Failure mode
- rupture
- Initiating cause
- over-heating (run-away reaction)
- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2020
Facility
- Application
- Petrochemical industry
- Sub-application
- catalytic reforming process
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
hydrogenation reactor
- Process temperature range [C]
- Very high temperature (500°C to 1000°C)
- Process pressure range [MPa]
- medium pressure (2 to 10 MPa)
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location
- industrial area
- Operational condition
- UNKNOWN
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 0
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas-solid mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2,
naphta,
nickel catalyst - Probable IGNITION SOURCE
References
- Sources categories
- ICHEME
- Reference & weblink
Event description extracted from the UK database ICHEME in PDF.
The
https://www.icheme.org/knowledge/safety-centre/resources/accident-data/
(accessed October 2020)
