SAFETY ASSESSMENT OF FLARE SYSTEMS BY FAULT TREE ANALYSIS

Abstract

Flaring is a combustion process of waste gases from the oil and gas industry. The escape of these gases from the flare stack without been burned is known as Flameout. These released gases can present human and environment toxicity as well as they can lead to a vapor cloud explosion (V.C.E), if conditions are provided. The flameout events which can occur by environmental, equipment and human factors have not received significant attention compared to other types of flare incidents, most probably due to the fact that they may stay unnoticed if detected and successfully reignited in the early hours. In this work we define some performance indicators extrapolated from a prepared fault tree. They are subsequently assessed through probabilistic methods to evaluate our system safety. The investigation carried out is aimed at better understanding of flameout occurrence mechanisms.