If a fire breaks out at a refinery owing to poorly maintained or corroded pipe fittings, the results can be sudden and devastating. Plants are built to extremely high standards, and flanges are made to withstand both high temperatures and pressures – or they should be. Personnel are on duty 24 hours a day, and special detection equipment is installed, so faults and leaks should be targeted well before they become a dangerous problem. So why do some plants continue to have dangerous accidents?

The Valero oil refinery, in Texas City is still under investigation following a series of disastrous fires. The last was in December, 2009 – the second in a month, and started in a crude oil processing plant.

Despite the high number of people in the Valero plant on the morning of the fire, no-one was hurt, suggesting it broke out in an area where few personnel congregate and evacuation procedures were efficient. Refineries and other plants are full of areas like this – places where pipe flanges and fittings are installed, but rarely checked. These are the areas least likely to have sophisticated detection devices, too. Human error, laziness and over-tight budgeting constraints are common reasons why such accidents occur.  The culprits of such incidents are, quite often, leaking or corroded pipe flanges – something that is easily preventable.

One way to minimise accidents is to install the highest quality pipe fittings in areas where checks are least likely. We at Chemipetro supply high quality pipe fittings and flanges to a wide range of clients – our main customer being the petrochemical industry.