(219g) Preliminary risk assessment of traffic accidents in Colombia involving loss of containment of liquid hydrocarbons

In Colombia, the environmental regulatory authorities have recently implemented standard procedures for the transportation of liquid fuels, requiring a mandatory quantitative assessment of the associated risks of such activities. This assessment must involve computer modelling of storage leakage or spill scenarios, and their corresponding impacts (e.g. fire, explosion, toxic release) in order to develop and design suitable contingency plans. This implies an understanding of potential hazards, the identification of the source of failure, quantification of probability of occurrence, and the assessment of potential impacts. The environmental authority must be given enough information to permit the transportation of a specific hazardous material, within the planned route, in the specific vehicle, at a certain date. As this is a new regulation, and most transportation companies cannot afford the use of licenced software tools or to hire
specialized companies to do the assessment, there is need to incorporate free software tools to accomplish such task.

In this regard, this study was focused on identifying the most typical petrochemical materials transported in the Colombian territory and their corresponding volumes. Then, based upon a multi-dimension decision method, most hazardous materials were identified. This information was used to identify two cases of study to do the modelling of loss of containment incidents and to assess their potential impacts. The geographic location for the modelling was defined considering the historical reports of incidents involving transportation of liquid fuels. Modelling was carried out with ALOHA by using surrogate molecules that were selected based upon a comprehensive properties’ analysis.