Domino effect reduction through the process layout for an ethylene process production

Abstract

The ethylene production process operates with the probability of generating domino effect scenarios due to the different chemicals that are stored and processed. A way to reduce that probability is to install protections. However, these safeguards can fail. In recent works, it has been demonstrated that the equipment layout in the early stages of the design minimize the domino effect probability. Thus, a model is proposed to distribute the equipment in an ethylene processing plant by calculating the probability estimation of damage due to overpressure and the escalation threshold values, adding equipment distribution restrictions (such as coordinates and equipment orientation). The mathematical model was formulated using mixed-integer nonlinear programming.