Application of domino effect quantitative risk assessment to Natech accident triggered by earthquakes in a liquor storage tank area

Abstract

Damage to industrial equipment caused by earthquakes is a typical Natech accident. Earthquake damage may cause tank failures and trigger accidental releases of hazardous substances, even a series of fires and explosions, forming a natural hazard-induced domino chain (NHDC), which poses a serious threat to the processing industry. In this study, a whole-process quantitative risk assessment (QRA) methodology for earthquake-induced domino accident chains is proposed. In the framework of QRA, specific probit models are used to quantify the damage of earthquakes and to assess the probability of storage tank failure. Besides, pool fires following the leakage of the failed tanks were considered to be the consequence of the earthquake Natech accident. The Mudan thermal radiation model and the threshold model were used to identify the propagation paths of domino effects. Case studies were carried out to investigate the dynamic evolution of fire-related domino effects in different credible accident scenarios, including multiple initial accidents co-occurring. The results show that the combination of multiple initial accident scenarios takes less time to complete domino effect escalation of the overall scenario than a single initial accident scenario and will significantly increase the regional risk indices.