QRA for RAPID Steam Cracker Complex and Its Effective Utilization for Risk-Based Engineering???????

Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) is undertaking the Refinery and Petrochemical Integrated Development Project (RAPID) in Pengerang, Malaysia. As a part of the complex, a Steam Cracker Complex (SCC) will include steam cracker unit to produce 1.29 million tonnes per year of ethylene, butadiene extraction unit, pygas hydrogenation unit, benzene extraction unit, MTBE unit and offsite & utility unit. PETRONAS appointed a consortium of Toyo Engineering Corporation and Toyo Engineering & Construction Sdn. Bhd. (TOYO) as the contractor for the Engineering, Procurement, Construction and Commissioning (EPCC) of the SCC.When such a new process facility is planned to be constructed at a specific site, Risk Assessment is required to be performed to demonstrate that the process risk brought by the facility to the surrounding area as well as personnel working inside the facility is acceptable or As Low As Reasonably Practicable (ALARP). Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) is the most common and widely adopted methodology in process industry. PETRONAS requirement to implement QRA to satisfy regulatory standards and company criteria’s as a risk management tool to manage and control the process risk of the facilities it owns and operates.
As a part of the EPCC Contract, TOYO conducted the QRA for the SCC to ensure the process risk would meet the criteria set by Malaysia regulation and PETRONAS standards. In QRA, process risk is generally evaluated with the criteria such as individual risk and/or societal risk. Those are generally considered the minimum recommendable assessment in QRA. QRA is a comprehensive analysis and the collected and processed data through the analysis is large and contains valuable information for risk management. In the RAPID SCC, such valuable information could be made the most of for other risk-based engineering or considerations. In the RAPID SCC project, such an information were utilized as inputs to determining blast design conditions of plant buildings, identification of critical structures supporting high risk equipment items, defining fire areas for determining fire water demand, validation of building to be used as a toxic shelters, determining mustering areas to be designated in emergency case.
This paper presents, firstly, overview of the standard QRA conducted for the SCC, and then introduce some of the risk-based studies utilizing the data derived through the QRA for additional safety engineering and emergency consideration.