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Coking and Fire in a Refinery Hydroprocessing Vessel

A pipe rupture in an operating hydroprocessing unit in a refinery caused a fire and extensive coking within several vessels (reactors, columns, etc.). The refinery carried separate fire and boiler & machinery coverages. As part of the ensuing arbitration, the insurers were interested in the extent of coking (and time to clean out the coke from the vessels) if there had been no fire. This information would permit proper allocation of a portion of the business interruption claim. APTECH was retained by one group of insurers to independently estimate the downtime due to coking assuming no fire had ensued. We delivered several time-lines of event sequences, contacted operating and industrial maintenance companies for relevant experience, and developed independent estimates of worker productivity when mining coke inside of confined spaces.

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.

Steven Kohan, Ph.D.		Chemical engineering, refinery processes, toxic fume generation.

Michael Cronin, P.E.		Stress analysis, design evaluation, engineering mechanics

Eric Sullivan, P.E.		Metallurgy, welding, failure analysis, fire and explosion investigations, equipment, piping.