Explosion in a cooling tower - lessons learned from managing contractors

摘要

In 2013, a fire and explosion resulted in approximately 28 fatalities and injured many others in the vicinity. The incident occurred during a construction project for a new cooling tower that was being added to an existing plant. The refinery initially started at 13,500 barrels per day and over five decades expanded to process 165,000 barrels per day. In 2009-2010, the refinery undertook a project to add a motor spirit processing plant to produce Bharat III/IV grade motor spirit to meet stringent fuel quality requirements set by Environmental Protection Agency in India. Four new cooling towers each with a throughput capacity of 3500m~3/h were commissioned. The additional capacity catered for a fluidised catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) and propylene recovery unit (PRU). With the addition of the Euro IV motor spirit project, an extra cooling water cell had to be installed. A fifth cooling tower would provide capacity to the newly added diesel hydrotreater unit, hydrogen generation unit and sulphur recovery unit. In 2013, a decision was taken to bring on line a newly built cooling tower, Cell 5, and commissioning activities commenced. A jump over connection was installed to transfer the cooling water from Cells 1-4. During the commissioning phase, a fire and explosion occurred, resulting in multiple contractor fatalities and injuries.