French benchmark and action plan in

industrial facilities : to manage risks from

ageing

October 2012, London

Gaëtan PROD’HOMME, INERIS (France)

Gaetan.prodhomme@ineris.fr

INERIS Structural safety activities Included in the Accidental Risk Division (ARD) : the Hazardous Phenomena and

Structural Safety (HPSS) department and the structural safety unit

Technical Expertise : link between structural safety and industrial risk management

• Industrial structures (pressure vessel, tank, pipe…) and some civilian structures (RC buildings, metallic beam structures…)

• Structural safety to accidental loads

- On site: safe buildings, process safety, domino effect, safety studies…

- Out site: Safety around SEVESO facilities (blast, fire…), structural reinforcement to blast, fire, natural disasters…

• Experiment : middle and small scale experimentation (blast tunnel, blast table…)

• Calculation tools : analytical home software, numerical software (Ansys, Castem…)

INERIS Structural safety activities

Activities and clients

• Technical support and third party review of safety studies to state services

• Support to industry on high level safety expertise or to meet regulatory demands

• Innovative protective device development

• Post-accidental studies

• Public (State, EC etc.) and private research

• Research workgroup participation (G3S)

• Training for industry and state services

Introduction

Why a national ageing plan in 2009 ?

Role of INERIS in this action plan

Benchmark content and conclusions

National Action Plan : main axes of improvement

Technical guidances issued from the action plan

Research issues around structural safety

Why a national plan ? Succession of accidents in France

• Recent examples :

• Pipeline of la Crau – summer 2009 : leak => pollution of a preserved area

• Refinery in Donges – 2008 : leak on a fuel pipe due to external corrosion => pollution of the Loire

• Refinery in Notre-Dame de Gravenchon - 2008 => leak on a propane pipe due to external corrosion

• Petrol storage unit at Ambès – 2007 : catastrophic failure of an atmospheric storage tank of oil ; corrosion of the bottom plates of the tank

• In 10 years in France : about 120 accidents linked to ageing of the facilities – mainly corrosion

• Refineries : 14 accidents ;

• Flammable liquids storage (terminals) : 14 accidents ;

• Chemical industries (52 accidents) ;

• Production of gas (Natural or LPG) :4 accidents ;

• Others (including pipelines) : 32 accidents.

• INERIS was called by environment ministry to provide a theoretical and practical analysis

• Around 10 persons directly involved for the different topics, two axes :

• Three reports produced

• Benchmark of the French practices

• To make an analysis of the practices

• To underline the difficulties

• To suggest improvement

• International benchmark

• To make a comparison in terms of regulations and practices in four countries (United-Kingdom, USA, Netherlands and Germany)

• Comparison with the French practices

• Bibliographic analysis of the regulations and professional guides

• Survey with EU-VRI

• Direct contacts and conferences

• Analysis of the regulation and professional guides

• Visits on 14 sites

• Participation to the national WG

Role of INERIS in the action plan: analysis of industrial practices

The content of the INERIS benchmark • Topics of the benchmark:

• Regulations around ageing monitoring : regulation references, mandatory aspects, responsibilities, third party validation...

• Organisation of inspection : competency, training, role of each department, interaction between services, external staff selection and control...

• Inspection practices : technical guides in use, inspection types (external, internal...) and frequency, Destructive and Non Destructive Testing (NDT) methods, testing data post-treatment...

• Mitigation: design criteria, fitness for service methods, remaining life notion, repairing solutions and controls, unrepairable equipment…

• Main axes of the analysis :

• Risk management of ageing : integration of risk assessment in the inspection processus,

• Homogeneity of the practices : differences in the policies between large and small facilities, between different activities…

• Main issues : industrial concerns (NDT reliability, fitness for service, cost…) and state services concerns (control of the inspection plan, analysis of the ageing state…)

• Specific questions : i.e. storage tank equipment opening policy (criteria, NDT…)

The conclusions and perspectives : key points • Global:

• Safety study and inspection plan should be related

• Accidental Feedback is very important and need to be shared between industries

• Organisation

• Keep history of all equipments

• Improve exchange between inspection, health, safety and operational units

• Develop learning for operators (early detection of defects)

• Competency

• Validate competencies of external operators

• Keep internal competencies

• Inspection and control

• Include all equipments in the inspection plan

• Validate NDT results (acoustic tests...)

• Improve RBI method transparency

• Include environmental risk in the studies

• Generalise geometrical tests

The content of the French ministry National Action Plan

• Main axes

• Mandatory Specific inspections if a recognized technical guidance is not used

• Cooperative Technical guidance for each type of equipment

• Development of research items to improve knowledge of ageing phenomena

• Implementation of these actions with a collaboration between all participants of the 2010 action plan.

Technical guides – UFIP/UIC

DT92 – Containment and tank fundations (RC structures)

DT93 – Safety measures systems

DT94 - Atmospheric tanks

DT96 - Pipes

DT97 - Refrigerated tanks

DT98 – Pipe supports

Technical guides : main content

- Degradation modes listed, illustrated and classified

- Control method detailed:

Technical guides : main content

- General inspection methodology

- High frequency visual control

- Periodic external complete control (visual, geometric measurements and non

destructive test)

- Periodic internal complete control (except for specific equipment)

- Fitness for service is verified

- Prioritisation : Risk Based Inspection

- Global methodology presented

- References

- Possibility for stakeholders to develop their own methodology

Challenge for technical guidance

Equipments under Risk Based Inspection seem safer but... :

- Difficulties to integrate risk analysis in the inspection plan without a complete Risk Based Inspection (API or EEMUA) method

- Several competencies needed

- Lot of information needed

- Difficulties of Risk Based Inspection

- Important cost

- Important factors can be hard to evaluate

- Integration of time unrelated degradations

- Difficulties for environment consequences integration in RBI;

- No domino effect integration in RBI

Some adaptations are necessary to make inspection more reliable and cost effective

Research perspectives: 1/2

- Get the best knowledge on existing equipment

• Reliability of testing methods depending on structure type

• Optimization of testing type and frequency to get data

• Human factor management

- Have the best-known inspection method adapted to equipment, risk and cost

• Sensibility of the RBI methods to main parameters

• Accidental and environmental risk involved by a degraded state

• Influence of degraded physical state on potential domino effect

Research perspectives 2/2

- Obtain an optimized maintenance program adapted to equipment, risk and cost :

• Some specific modes of failure to investigate (effect and kinetic)

• Basics methods versus more advanced models (Fitness for service)

• Safety criteria and security factor optimization

=>MANAGEMENT OF AGEING IN INDUSTRY BASED ON COST AND RISK MINIMISATION STILL NEED SOME RESEARCH

What’s next : partners and possible actions…

• Industrial partners

• Statistical data collection

• Various maintenance methods (data analysis, inspection, control, repair...)

• Economical and practical constraints

• Non-academic partners :

• Mechanical advanced analysis and practical method development (control, repair...)

• Risk and reliability based maintenance

• Engineering tools production

• Academic partners :

• Experimental and theoretical development

• Reliability and risk based optimisation

Thank you for your attention:

Gaetan.prodhomme@ineris .fr