Study On Safety Evaluation Of MTBE Plant

In recent years,the economy of China has been developing continuously and rapidly.With the deepening of industrialization and urbanization in the process of development,the environmental and ecological problems have become increasingly serious.In order to reduce air pollution caused by the automobile harmful gases emissions,MTBE(methyl tert butyl ether)has been used as the main additive of high octane gasoline,so that the MTBE plant developed rapidly,a large number of oil refining enterprises have improved the capacity of MTBE through newly building or expanding plant.Material mixed carbon four and methanol used in MTBE process and its product are flammable and toxic.A flammable and explosive mixture will be formed by the material vapor from the leakage courses caused by malfunctions,pipeline damage,operational errors,etc.compounded with air.Fire and explosion will occur easily once the mixture exposed to an ignition source,which will seriously endanger the surrounding environment,personnel or equipment.Therefore,it has great significance to identify,analyze and evaluate the potential hazards of MTBE plant.In this paper,the current situation and factors of risk of MTBE plant operation were analyzed,the comprehensive utilization of Dow Chemical Fire and explosion index assessment method,hazard and operability(HAZOP)analysis method and the layer of protection(LOPA)analysis method to evaluate the safety of MTBE plant was proposed,based on which the plant is optimized.In view of the MTBE plant(annual output is 160,000 tons)of D Petrochemical Industries Co.,Dow Chemical Fire and explosion index assessment method was firstly used to obtain the risk degree of each unit of the plant,and quantify the expected loss of potential fire and explosion or reactivity accident by quantitative analysis;secondly,each drawing was split into several nodes based on the whole set of process flow diagram,piping and instrument diagram,the deviation of each node was analysed by HAZOP,thus the adverse consequences that could be caused by danger were predicted,to find out the existing security measures of important accident scenario;and at last,through the detailed quantitative of LOPA analysis,whether the existing security measures will reduce the risk to an acceptable level was checked,and reasonable and feasible safety countermeasures and suggestions to identified potential risks were proposed,to improve the inherent safety of the MTBE plant,so as to achieve safe and stable long-term operation.