Quote:
Originally Posted by red-beard
How often do they blow up? We get one blow up every 5 to 10 years...
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You also have a whole bunch of them in that area, one of the most concentrated refining regions in the world.
The first refinery I worked at was a small low-budget POS that caught fire on average ever 14 months. It did not last that long and is gone now.
The last refinery I worked at did not have a fire or explosion in the 9 years I was there.
IIRC it hasn't had a fire since the early 90's.
In the 7 years I've been at my current refinery we've had one fire and no explosions. The fire was due to a dumarz doing something dumb (IMPO).
He isn't here anymore.
But make no mistake it is a very dangerous business.
Imagine an incredibly large volume of extremely flammable product, at times reaching 900 degrees and sometimes under as much as 2400 psi, rushing through a maze of hundreds of miles of pipes and tens of thousands of valves in a refinery.
Throw in a few hundred million SCFM of hydrogen at 2000 psi, 20 or 30 giant heaters and boilers, and it can be a recipe for disaster.
But the people who run these facilities in the U.S. do so responsibly and with great care and pride. If they don't they or their co-workers could get burned up and die.
Much less so overseas where the guys opening and closing the valves are making less than a dollar an hour and have zero edumacation. They have lots of workers in India.
If a few dozen get killed they have plenty more to replace them with.
And we all know how environmentally conscious there are in India, one swim in the Ganges river can show you that ....