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To: thackney

Understood, we have a family member who works at the neighboring refinery. The local news report described the fire as an “unplanned fire event,” which is a rather tongue-in-cheek understatement in itself given how there were multiple fires underway for awhile, and they were large enough to tower over the tank farm in at least two locations with what appeared to be other smaller fires in between and around the larger two flames. Two and a half hours later one of the two major sources still flared up from time to time atop or behind one of the storage tanks, while the other fires appeared to have been brought under control and were venting. So, this event appeared to be something considerably more than just some flame and flare from one of the nozzles or vents in a planned unit restart gone awry.


32 posted on 07/17/2014 6:57:13 AM PDT by WhiskeyX
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To: WhiskeyX; thackney

You need to understand that emergency flares are designed to be on fire when needed.

Say you have a vessel designed for a particular pressure of a flammable gas. If the pressure gets too high (for whatever reason due to process or control issues), the alternatives are to let the vessel explode (bad), let explosive gasses loose (potential for explosion if an ignition source is contacted), or to purposely burn the gas off (flare).

These types of fires are not pleasant as they represent lost product ($), and environmental regulation hassles, but they are preferable to the alternatives.


33 posted on 07/17/2014 7:15:01 AM PDT by SoothingDave
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To: WhiskeyX
Two and a half hours later one of the two major sources still flared up from time to time atop or behind one of the storage tanks, while the other fires appeared to have been brought under control and were venting. So, this event appeared to be something considerably more than just some flame and flare from one of the nozzles or vents in a planned unit restart gone awry.

You have more info of this event than I do so I could be way off base. But judging just from your descriptions, and the picture, and my experience in plants, that is flares.

I would say it was certainly not planned based upon your description, but a reaction to something gone wrong and multiple processes had to go to emergency flares. Look again at the last photo, there are 5 flares in emergency condition. It might take several hours for those to balance out the mass flow before they could shut down.

37 posted on 07/17/2014 7:58:24 AM PDT by thackney (life is fragile, handle with prayer.)
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