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Fire in an Oil Shale Refinery

A fire broke out under a coker unit in a large oil shale refinery. Liquid hydrocarbons feeding the fire eventually caused the formation of a pool fire that spread over 20,000 square feet of the premises. The plant's pressure vessels and piping were extensively damaged due to overheating. APTECH was hired to find the cause and origin of the fire. The field inspection revealed that a slurry recycle pipe had been the first to rupture and spill its combustible contents. Metallurgical testing of the ruptured pipe showed that the wall thickness of the pipe had been greatly reduced by corrosive attack from the slurry. The rupture occurred at the thinnest part of the pipe wall.

Satish Almaula		Plant failure and root cause analysis; process and design engineering analysis; process technology development and testing; plant engineering, operations, maintenance and safety management; plant and process control system management.

Kimble Clark, Ph.D.		Failure analysis, heat transfer & thermodynamics, process plant equipment failures & explosions, fuel science, combustion, industrial fires and explosions.

Richard Schreiber, P.E.		Machinery and mechanical device failure analysis, mechanical testing, combustion and heat transfer, industrial fires and explosions, gas appliances.

Geoffrey Egan, Ph.D.		Engineering mechanics, welding engineering, stress and fatigue analysis, risk analysis, nondestructive examination, project management.

Philip Lindsay, P.E.		Corrosion failure analysis, metallurgy, piping systems, corrosion mitigation, materials selection.