Risk Analysis for Overpressure From Pressure Vessel Burst

Pressure vessel burst (PVB) is a type of explosion that involves a burst of a pressure vessel containing gas at elevated pressure. Any vessel that is pressured or has the capacity to build high pressure before bursting can be a candidate for generating a PVB. At burst, a blast wave propagates outward from the source by the sudden expansion of a compressed gas. Fragment hazards are also present with the shell of the vessel along with attached external accessories thrown. Vessels with inert gases or mixtures as well as flammable materials are possible for PVBs.

Historically, there have been incidents related to PVBs, and some work has been done to predict the overpressure impacts such as in Guidelines for Vapor Cloud Explosion, Pressure Vessel Burst, BLEVE and Flash Fire Hazards, 2nd Edition by CCPS.  Comprehensive review of this paper on the overpressure predictions versus experimental data provides evidence towards the predictions. Moreover, as Facility Siting has received significant attention recently, Air Products has included PVBs in Facility siting to safely locate occupied building in the plant having many pressure vessels in addition to congested volumes for Vapor Cloud Explosions (VCE).

Therefore, the present work focuses on how to select an appropriate PVB model and correctly use it to better perform a risk analysis by calculating Fatal Accident Rate (FAR) for each occupied building.