Dramatic natural events recently stroke several countries worldwide. The impact of the natural events on industrial sites often resulted in large releases of hazardous materials, causing severe technological accidents (Natural-Technological or NaTech events). Industrial operators were often found unprepared or off-guard for unannounced events but also when they had received early warnings. Due to these occurrences, public awareness has raised and the issue of NaTech is now considered as an emerging risk. Due to the climate change and increase in the frequency of some categories of natural disasters, the likelihood of NaTech scenarios is growing, thus NaTech may be also considered as a new risk in some areas of the world. In the present study, the process that ended in the awareness of the scientific community and of the general public toward NaTech has been analyzed. Available tools and knowledge gaps in the assessment of NaTech scenarios are evidenced. The analysis is mainly addressed to the potential impact of flood, lightning, and earthquake events on industrial installations where hazardous substances are present, aiming at the identification of strategies to improve the resilience of industrial facilities to technological accidents caused or intensified by natural hazards.
Most of the scientific works on syngas combustion deal with dry air as oxidizer, whereas very few studies have been carried out on syngas combustion in oxygen-enriched air (i.e., oxy-combustion). In this work, the explosion behavior (peak pressure and burning velocity) for H 2 /CO/O 2 /N 2 /CO 2 mixtures has been evaluated experimentally and numerically, for different H 2 /CO ratios, fuel (H 2 +CO) concentrations with respect to O 2 , molar percentages of CO 2 , and for values of the oxygen-enrichment factor, E (= O 2 /O 2 +N 2 ), ranging from 0.21 (i.e., air) to 1 (i.e., pure oxygen). The Sandia PREMIX module of the CHEMKIN package, coupled to the detailed Davis reaction scheme, was used to calculate the unstretched laminar burning velocity. Results have shown a good agreement with the experimental data. Through ad hoc simulations, the role of CO 2 has been also evaluated. Furthermore, the ranges of validity of the additivity rule for the burning velocity have been identified. All tests show the typical trend of pressure time history of explosions occurring in a closed combustion chamber. However, some compositions show anomalous impulses that could not be explained by classical theory for deflagration/detonation. Explanation for this behavior is based on results of previous works by the same authors on combustion-induced Rapid Phase Transition (c-RPT).
Recent natural disasters that seriously affected critical infrastructure (CI) with significant socioeconomic losses and impact revealed the need for the development of reliable methodologies for vulnerability and risk assessment. In this paper, a risk-based multi-level stress test method that has been recently proposed, aimed at enhancing procedures for evaluation of the risk of critical non-nuclear infrastructure systems against natural hazards, is specified and applied to six key representative CIs in Europe, exposed to variant hazards. The following CIs are considered: an oil refinery and petrochemical plant in Milazzo, Italy, a conceptual alpine earth-fill dam in Switzerland, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline in Turkey, part of the Gasunie national gas storage and distribution network in the Netherlands, the port infrastructure of Thessaloniki, Greece, and an industrial district in the region of Tuscany, Italy. The six case studies are presented following the workflow of the stress test framework comprised of four phases: pre-assessment phase, assessment phase, decision phase and report phase. First, the goals, the method, the time frame and the appropriate stress test level to apply are defined. Then, the stress test is performed at component and system levels and the outcomes are checked and compared to risk acceptance criteria. A stress test grade is assigned, and the global outcome is determined by employing a grading system. Finally, critical components and events and risk mitigation strategies are formulated and reported to stakeholders and authorities.
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