Quantitative risk analysis of domino effect and natech accidents triggered by flood in liquor storage tank farms

Abstract

Damage to atmospheric storage tanks from flooding may lead to severe natural-technological (Natech) accidents. In addition, subjected to escalation vectors such as thermal radiation or overpressure, neighboring tanks may fail and even cause new fire and explosion accidents, known as domino accidents. In this study, a new procedure is developed to quantify the risk of flood-induced Natech accidents on storage tanks by incorporating the potential domino effect into the same quantitative risk assessment (QRA) framework. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation of the flow velocity field by numerical software effectively corrected the flood loads imposed on the storage tanks at different locations. The developed whole-process procedure was applied in a liquor storage tank farm. The propagation rule of domino effects for a single primary accident storage tank versus multiple primary accident storage tanks were discussed separately in the case study. The results showed that the scenario with two storage tanks as primary accidents required less cascades and a shorter time to end the domino propagation than a single storage tank. Moreover, in all scenarios discussed, the accident risk indices with domino effects considered were always higher than when it was not.