Major Hazards of Natural Gas Storage
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SYMPOSIUM SERIES NO. 156 Hazards XXII # 2011 IChemE MAJOR HAZARDS OF NATURAL GAS STORAGE Alan Tyldesley, Haztech Consultants Ltd, UK INTRODUCTION planning appeals in London, where HSE advised against Ever since coal gas was developed as a source of heat and development and gave evidence about the hazards, and light in Victorian times, we have needed to store flammable how they derived the consultation zones. gas, to balance out the pattern of supply and demand, which The gasholders next to the Kennington Oval cricket varies sharply over the course of a single day, as well as ground are a familiar landmark, with the largest dating from summer to winter. When the UK moved away from from 1878. The owners of the cricket ground proposed coal gas during the 1960s to using natural gas, a different reconstructing three stands with 1830 additional seats, and range of issues arose in connection with gas storage. a new 168 bed hotel within the consultation zones for the Towns gas used a large number of local production sites, gas holders. The proposal was rejected, but at a subsequent each with their own small scale low pressure storage, appeal, planning permission was allowed in June 2009 and while natural gas was imported from a relatively tiny development will go ahead. number of sources and a national grid of pipelines had to HSE had originally set consultation zones around low be constructed, operating at much higher pressures and pressure gas holders of 60 m. This figure came from an with it, a small number of much larger storage units, analysis of seal fires and the calculated consequences an largely for peak shaving of the demand. internal explosion, but following the introduction of For the last 20 years we have mainly used gas from COMAH in 1999, and a review by Transco of incidents the North Sea, and smaller reserves from UK gas fields else- and failure mechanisms, the advice changed. New potential where, but as these supplies become exhausted, the gas failure modes were analysed, including decoupling of the industry is having to look to gas from much further afield sections, crown failure and escalation from a seal fire to a to keep our homes warm, industry operating and to generate large fireball. One of the more uncertain factors in any electricity. Some of the new supplies are coming by sea analysis is the probability that a major release will ignite. from the middle east as liquefied natural gas (LNG), while This was disputed at the planning enquiries, but HSE’s other supplies are coming from Norway and Central Asia best estimate of a 0.5 chance of ignition drawn from 6 in high pressure pipelines. The form in which the gas is major gas release incidents was accepted. The planning transported influences the method of storage. Whether the advice is now based on the consequences of a decoupled gas comes by sea or pipeline, there is a need for additional seal causing a large sudden release which ignites after a storage in the UK, and from a low base, a substantial expan- delay followed by a fireball which ignites 50% of the sion in the storage capacity is now being planned or maximum capacity of the gas holder, and total collapse constructed. leading to loss of 100% of the gas contents . This paper looks at the range of storage technologies The incident history of such units is actually good, now in use, and in particular the expansion of salt cavern with major fires in 1912 (Ilkeston, seal decoupled), 1927 storage, from a safety perspective. (Manchester, two holders collapsed following seal fire) and Mytholmroyd (1929, roof buckled and failed), and unignited releases in 1919 (Port Glasgow, major roof LOW PRESSURE STORAGE failure), 1922 (Ashton u Lyne, decoupling of sections) and The oldest technology used for gas storage, was in low a further poorly documented incident mentioned in the pressure gas holders that were developed for storing towns 1912 report. There appear to have been no serious fire gas, from Victorian times. There are a number of different incidents since 1929, apart from a terrorist attack on a gas designs, but from the safety perspective, I think they split holder in Warrington in 1993, despite a population of tidily into the types that rise and fall, as the volume of gas 5000 or more such holders which were dotted for decades inside changes, and the waterless, MAN or Wiggins type all across the country. that were always less common, but which are very prominent, There are interesting issues relating to the public per- because of the fixed shell that encloses the internal piston. ception of risk here. Low pressure gas holders have been The Wiggins type, based on a design from 1951 are familiar in the urban scene for over 100 years, and they still being built at steelworks and elsewhere, for holding never seem to have caused public concern. Smaller gas gas at low pressures. They clearly have the potential for releases that do not ignite are scarcely news, and such big gas to escape around the piston, and fill the casing above incidents as there have been are long forgotten. There is with a gas air mixture, with the risk of a confined explosion in consequence a credibility gap, when analysis shows the but lack of data and interest in these means they are not hazard radius from some of the largest gasholders can considered further in this paper. now extend to over 600 m, and hence cover 113 Ha from The hazards of watersealed gas holders have been a single gas holder (see Table 1). That is a lot of land in back in the news in recent years, as a consequence of two an urban area. 361 SYMPOSIUM SERIES NO. 156 Hazards XXII # 2011 IChemE Table 1. Hazard ranges low pressure storage scope of COMAH, but on the other hand excludes the pipe- lines between the wellheads and the gas processing area Consultation zones from the requirements of the Pipelines Safety Regulations for planning purposes Gas holder 1 Gas holder 2 (PSR). Consequently HSE loses the right to insist on six months prior notification before construction, and a few Inner zone fireball 120 m radius 233 m other detailed requirements from PSR. This interpretation radius for largest of the legislation encompassing wellheads and a processing holder 113 t plant scattered across a few kilometers of farm land perhaps Middle zone 1000 tdu 270 510 ought to have some limit if the pipelines become extended Outer zone 500 tdu 360 693 across land where the operator does not have full control, as is the case with normal pipelines. The technology is essentially simple to understand, but In the event, HSE’s recommendation to turn down slightly daunting in scale. A well is sunk into a strata of rock new development at the Oval cricket ground was not salt, and a concentric pipe inserted into the main bore. Water accepted at the called-in planning inquiry, mainly because is pumped down the hole, and dissolves the rock away, so the gas holder is likely to be at less than full capacity brine is extracted from the annulus of the well. Over a during the times when the Oval had a cricket match that period of months a cavern forms, and the shape can be con- attracted a sellout crowd. The development of a new hotel trolled to some extent by suitable adjustment of the solution within the hazard zone was accepted by the minister. mining process. A variant uses separate wells for water injec- The opposite view prevailed more recently, when pro- tion and brine extraction. The size of the developing cavern posals came in for extensive new development and two can be calculated by measuring how much salt has been tower blocks, close to the gas holder in Wandsworth High extracted, and the 3D shape can be determined by echo St, London. The planning inspector’s report was published sounding techniques from a probe inserted into the cavern. 3 in March 2010. HSE quite understandably observed that The typical cavern size at completion is 300,000 m , but the developers proposals took no account at all of the some caverns up to twice this size are being brought into 3 risks from the gas holder, and that evacuating tower service. A single cavern of 300,000 m size holds around blocks which perhaps had multiple fires started by a single 15 kt of gas at 70 bar. In comparison to steel pressure incident at the gas holder was an unreasonable risk. vessels, these really are huge volumes and quantities of Thermal dose units (tdu) combine radiation intensity gas. Geomechanical analysis of the stability of the completed with time for short duration incidents. At 1000 tdu there cavern is used to demonstrate that the shape is stable, and is a 1% fatality risk to the general population, at 500 tdu assign a minimum operating pressure, that will prevent or there is some small risk to vulnerable groups. minimise incremental spalling of the walls. In safety terms, underground storage has some impor- tant benefits; the containment system is immune from exter- SALT CAVERN STORAGE nal fire attack, and is there is comparatively little to show at The use of specially constructed salt caverns for gas storage the surface. is not a new technology, with the earliest examples found No secondary containment system is possible, in America from the 1950s. however, which means that the rock salt deposits have to In the UK however the only existing salt cavern sites be very carefully evaluated before use.