TEXAS CITY REFINARY EXPLOSION

1. LOCATED-UNITED STATES
2. POSITION-THIRD LARGEST IN US(TEXAS REFINERY)
3. OCCURED-23 MARCH, 2005
4. HOW-when hydrocarbon vapour cloud was ignited (ignition source
basically was running vehicle engine) and violently exploded at ISOM
unit
5-DEVASTATING ACCIDENT-killed 15 worker,injured 180 others and
severely damaged refinary

PRESENTED BY-RAKHI KATIYAR

• BACKGROUND-
• Built in 1934
• in january 2005 a report released from (consulting film TELOS)
that
• numerous safety issues were there
• including broken alarms ,thinned pipe ,chunks of concrete falling
and bolts dropping etc.
• ISOM UNIT
• for conversion of low octane hydrocarbons into high
octane hydrocarbons which are desirable for gasoline
• RAFFINATE SPLITTER
• it was to separate lighter hydrocarbons from top of tower
(including mainly pentane and hexane ).Lighter
hydrocarbons were condensed and pumped to light
raffinate storage tank
• while heavier hydrocarbons were recovered from bottom
of splitter and then pumped to heavy raffinate storage
tank
STARTUP MORNING
• The startup process was started at 9:30 am with initial
filling of splitter.
• On 23 march early morning it was discussed that heavy
storage tank are almost full so startup process should not
continue today but this message could not get circulated
among all and unfornately startup procedure continued on
that day
• so before refilling and circulation process heavy raffinate
was drained from bottom of splitter into heavy storage
tank throgh level control valve-
continued!
• then VALVE got shut down manually .
• After this circulation restarted and raffinate was once
again fed into tower eventhough level was already too
high.As valve was closed so heavy raffinate could not be
drained out into storage tank,still defective LT was
showing level less than 100%
• Construction of splitter was of opaque glass so it was not
possible to check the level visually.basically here
inadequate communication system and improper
repairement was responsible for this tragedy
LATE MORNING
• Burners in furnace was turned on to preheat raffinate
going
• then gradually temperature crossed safe range zone still
level transmitter was showing reading less than 100%.
• Remaining N2 in tower drastically raised the pressure and
associated pipeline became compressed with the
increasing volume of raffinate.
• operation crew considered that pressure get raised
because of overheating so pressure get released
AT NOON
• By 12:42pm the furnace got closed and LCV was fully
opened drained heavy raffinate from splitter
• then LT reading goes down to 78% while fuild level was
48m in about 52m tall tower.
• Eventhough flow into and flow out were also matching
and extra heat get transferred through HE into entry feed
consequently avrg. temp inside column reached to liq BP
so almost fulfilled tower get expanded due to heat
• .to release the pressure in splitter three pressure relief
valves were fully opened.
EXPLOSION
• Vapour cloud continued to spread across ISOM
unit ,no emergency sound was there
• so by 1:20pm vapour cloud was ignited by
overheated truck engine then it produced massive
explosion
• that ruined public upto miles and damaged millions of
dollars worth of refinary equipment.
• ISOM unit was severely damaged and about 15
people died and injured 180 others.
REASONS INVESTIGATED FOR EXPLOSION

Various commitees investigated

TECHNICAL,ORGANIZATIONAL AND SAFETY aspects of
refinary then figured out numerous regions-
• failure to invest in plant infrastructure
• lack of corporate oversight on safety culture
• major focus on occupational safety only and not on
process safety
• a defective management
• inadequate traning of operators
CONTINUED!
• A lack of competent supervision for startup operation
• less awareness about major accident prevention
programmes
• poor communication between individuals and
departments
• use of outdated and ineffective work procedure
technical failures-

• Blowdown drum of insufficient

size
• inoperative alarms and level
sensors in ISOM unit
• lack of preventive
maintenance on safety critical
system
 MY VIEWS!
• In my opinion there should be proper mechanism of
coordination b/w workers and interdepartments that has
been respected.
• proper memorandum of understanding and proper
standard operating procedure had to be there
• There should be adequate training of workers basically
those who frequently work with operating system.Right
sort of actions should be taken at right time and in right
intensity, updated and effective work procedure should
be followed to minimize or avoid such kind of
devastating accidents.
THANKS!