REFINERY FIRES

54 June 2001 www.isa.org In Tech

In the line of fire

Coker unit refinery blast points to safety issues.
By Bob Felton

Coker units, like the one at the Tosco Corp. petroleum refinery that sent 100,000 of its neighbors scurrying indoors on 23 April to escape a cloud of toxic smoke boiling 3,000 feet into the sky, have been involved in several fires in recent years. A coker unit typically is the last stop in processing a batch of crude oil and allows refineries to improve their profitability by squeezing more salable product out of each barrel. Although there were no injuries in the April fire, less than a month before the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) had criticized Tosco management for failures that led to four deaths in a February 1999 refinery fire near San Francisco. The April fire began at 4:50 p.m. (PDT) and burned for approximately five hours. A Tosco spokesman estimated the blaze reached a temperature of 2,000F at its most intense. Five area fire departments helped the refinerys fire-fighting crew. Most of the 230-acre facili-

ty was unaffected by the fire and continued production without interruption. Around the plant, however, the effects ranged from a massive snarl on the San Diego Freeway to cancellation of Little League baseball games, as a film of black soot covered childrens uniforms. About 100,000 residents of Orange County and the cities of Carson and Long Beach were told to go indoors and stay put, keeping doors and windows closed. The plant processes about 130,000 barrels of petroleum per day, and the price of May gasoline futures spiked sharply on news of the fire, closing at $1.09 per gallon, slightly below last years peak. Additionally, the Tosco refinery is among just a few refineries producing gasoline that complies with the Environmental Protection Agencys clean-air requirements for the California marketplace. Though a plant spokesperson told reporters that the Carson plant had a good safety record, the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined the plant $15,935 in December 2000 for safety violations it described as serious.

REFINERY FIRES

In Tech www.isa.org June 2001 55

toms being processed today. Standard carbon steel A black, heavy, tarry paste with some amount is not an acceptable metal for surfaces where you of light, trapped components is all that remains, are feeding hot, heavy products that are heated at once most of the petroleum products have been a very high temperature. The severity factor gets removed from the crude. The refinery then heats to be so critical that youve got a high potential for the paste to about 900F at pressures on the order corrosion acceleration. of 550 pounds per square inch and pumps it into Further, Craft recommended that plant engithe bottom of the coker tank. The coker tanks neers identify the steel used throughout the refintypically have diameters of 15 to 30 feet and are ing process and take steps to ensure that the cor55 to 90 feet high. rect steel is used everywhere. Similarly, corrosion The light materials escape from the paste as it inspection must be frequent and comprehensive. cools in the relatively low-pressure and lowtemperature environment, and they are then col- Prior fire killed four The 1999 fire occurred at a Tosco refinery in lected. The remaining material is carbon, which is gathered and sold as fuel. The coking tanks Martinez, Calif., near San Francisco. Four people process successive batches until filled with car- were killed and one critically injured in that fire, bon. It takes on a hard consistency that requires a which began when workers inadvertently released drill-riglike apparatus to bore through the middle naphtha onto a hot fractionator while attempting of the coke, which is then sawed into smaller to replace piping attached to the 150-foot-tall fractionator tower while the process unit was in pieces using water jets. Anton Riecher, editor of Industrial Fire World, operation. The subsequent fireball engulfed five addressed the subject of coker fires in a May 1999 workers then working on the tower. The CSB released its report of its investigation article: It is almost certain, he wrote, that fires and explosions involving coker units will contin- in Martinez on 28 March and was critical of ue into the new millennium with disturbing fre- Tosco management. The board recommended, quency. The reason is that the crude stock now among other things, that Tosco undertake a comsent to coking units has a greater sulfur and heav- panywide, systematic assessment of nonroutine ier metal content than in years past. At high tem- maintenance procedures at its refineries, includIT peratures, these materials promote corrosion of ing the degree of management oversight. the tanks. Additionally, the coking process is inherently deCoker unit structive of tanks. Though catastrophic structural failures of coking units are 820F 2530 psig CW practically unknown, the frequent heating and cooling cycles tend to promote 15 cracking and bulging at discontinuities. When a leak occurs and the superheated, pressurized product escapes from the tanks, it Coke 7 drums expands rapidly and is easily ignited. Plant engineers will 6 have to implement a broad 4 range of strategies to eliminate coker fires. Jerry Craft, 1 a onetime refinery fire chief STM and now a consultant, 925F emphasized the importance of corrosion control Heater Fractionator in a 1999 talk. Metallurgy has to be upgraded, he Coke said, in order to compenFresh feed sate for the [crude] bot-

Inside a coker

It is almost certain that fires and explosions involving coker units will continue into the new millennium with disturbing frequency.
Riecher

Gas

100F 510 psig

Reflux drum

Unstabilized naptha
8

STM
1

Gas oil stripper

Gas oil