Design Safety Project 35 CHE 300 Term 211

Your project will be a mini report having two parts: a safety case analysis and a heat exchanger design. The
report should be concise and from your own words.

Please note the following:

• The report should follow the given template. Using Microsoft word, 12 font, 1.5 line spacing. Sections,
Figures and Tables should be numbered properly.
• You should document and refer every sentence or paragraph in the report as you learned in English
214.

Upon grading the report:

• You must submit a soft word copy sent to chrystie.robin@gmail.com before 4:00 pm. on Sunday 19th
Dec 2021
• I will run the report for Plagiarism, higher than 15% similarity in your report will result in an
automatic F in your project. Similarity even under 15 % will affect your report grade.
• I may interview you and ask you about anything in the report, and I will grade you based on that.

Report Rubric:
Evaluation item Grade Comments
Report Structure and writing
English writing (Eng 214) 3
Report formatting (Eng 214) 2
Total 5
Report Technical Evaluation
PART I
1 2
2 3
3 3
4 5
5 2
Sub Total 15
PART II
1 10
2 10
Sub Total 20
8% of your total course
Total 40 grade

Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201

 Safety Case Analysis and Heat Exchanger Designing

Abstract
As safety regulations in several petrochemical industries and refineries are usually regulated inaccurately,
operators in the field are exposed to life-threatening issues. Explosions, leakage of lethal gases, and
exceedingly more incidents caused by fragile leadership in the safety culture of such industries.

December 19,2021

Name Sec ID Work % Signature

Hadi Bu-Saad 06 201830460 33.33
Basil Alanazi 05 201848980 33.33
Ibrahim Alrajeh 06 201749690 33.33
Total = 100%

Part I

Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201

Analyse the heat exchanger explosion by filling the given report template as instructed in each part for the
given incident:
HEAT EXCHANGER Explosion HIGH TEMP HYDROGEN ATTACK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orqmTvjRXQM&t=406s

Answer these questions by a small paragraph 4-7 sentences

1. What are Nelson curves? What are they used for?

Charts and curves, generally, are widely used in the applications related to the oil and gas industries.
In this report, Nelson curves are to be discussed. The data obtained from the processes are reported to
the American Petroleum Institution and, in the case of Nelson curves, the data of interest are both the
hydrogen partial pressure and the temperature of the overall system. Nelson curves are fundamental in
indicating if it is probable for a high temperature hydrogen attack to occur in the process unit, or if the
unit is safe from HTHA. The graphing of these curves is divided into two regions, as shown in Figure
1. The area below the curve represents the region where the working conditions are harmless and safe,
while the area above the curve is an indication of a probable HTHA occurrence.

Figure 1: Nelson Curves Representing the Limits of Operation (Satyendra,2016).

2. Sketch the heat exchanger showing all temperatures and materials used. (do this
by yourself don’t copy and paste the diagram)
Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201
3. What are the ways to clear fouling in the petrochemical industry?
Various ways exist for clearing the fouling from process units in the petrochemical industry. The most
commonly used method for cleaning an operating unit, such as a heat exchanger, is the hydro blasting
clearing method. This method uses highly pressurized jet water that passes through the whole heat
exchanger and the tubes contained within it, removing all waste deposits existing on top of the tubes.
The second vital method to clear fouling inside of a heat exchanger is the mechanical cleaning (which
requires manual removal of he wastes). Finally, extracting the fouling could also be done by a further
specific way using prepared chemical solutions.

4. Explain in details high-T hydrogen attack? and how did it cause the explosion?
Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201
 High Temperature Hydrogen Attack, or the methane reaction, is a very hazardous phenomenon in the
petrochemical industry. HTHA is associated with very high temperatures and pressures and, at these
conditions, the hydrogen molecules within the tubes of the heat exchanger would decompose into
hydrogen atoms. These hydrogen atoms would then react with, in this case, carbon that is present in
the carbon steel resulting in the formation of methane gas, as shown in Figure 2. The accumulation of
methane increased the overall pressure within the heat exchanger, which caused the fracturing of the
pipes leading to the disastrous incident in the Tesoro refinery.

Figure 2: Schematic depicting hydrogen ingress and methane formation in steels (Urzendowski,2013).

5. What do we mean by “Damage mechanism reviews”?

Damage mechanism reviews is an exceedingly helpful method in observing and identifying what
factors led to a specific incident, and presents special procedures (or ways) for an engineer to avoid
such a catastrophic accident in the upcoming operations. Moreover, (Damage mechanism reviews)
represents a unique procedure to evaluate an incident and seek for probable deterioration of refinery
and industrial processes.

PART II
Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201
A chemical engineer is to design a shell and tube heat exchanger in a restricted area in a room of a length of
1.75 m. 4 kg/sec of water at an average velocity of 0.375 m/sec is to be heated in the tube side from 50°C to
65°C using 1.875 cm (inside diameter) tubes. The overall heat transfer coefficient (based on inside tube
area) is 1390 W/m2 °C. The fluid used for heating (shell side) is water (entering temperature of 95°C) with a
mass flow rate of 2.0 kg/sec.

1) Starting with a single shell pass heat exchanger: find the number of tube passes, the number tubes per
pass, and tube length. (using the LMTD method).

Solution by steps all equations and calculations:

Assumptions: 1- study operating conditions, 2- The heat exchanger is well insulated so that heat loss to the
surroundings is negligible, 3- Fluid properties are constant, 4- Changes in the kinetic and Potential energy is
of fluid streams are negligible.

Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201

Discussion:

To meet the required specifications, the heat exchanger must be 1.72m long and have two tube passes. To
arrive at that conclusion, we began with a double pipe heat exchanger, then determined the surface area of
the tube and, finally, the length of the shell. Then determine the number of tubes required to maintain the
required velocity. Then there's the number of passes. Then, find the correction factor to determine the new
length of the shell.

2) If the mass flow rate entering the tubes is increased to 10 kg/sec. Use the NTU method to predict the
outlet temperatures for the hot and the cold fluids. Assume all other parameters are the same including the
inlet temperatures.

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Solution by steps all equations and calculations:

Discussion:

At part two, the outlet temperature for the cold and hot fluids is to be determined using the NTU method.
Some parameters were determined from the LMTD method, such as (As) from the previous question. The
desired answers are T2=63.5c and t2=56.3c for shell, out and tube, out respectively.

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 Conclusion for both parts

To summarize, chemical engineers' work is fraught with danger, and in order to avoid it, engineers should
follow safety precautions. An increase in the petrochemical plant's level of safety is required. Periodic
cleaning and inspection on the heat exchangers available in the field of operation. The use of the LMTD
method to obtain some useful parameters from the heat exchanger. Then, once all of the temperatures were
known, we used the NTU method, which was extremely useful in the designing of the heat exchanger.

Dr. Zuhair Omar Malaibari Term 201