Natural gas accidents

A 1978 natural gas accident in Arizona destroyed one house, extensively damaged two others, partially damaged 11 other homes, and resulted in one fatality and five injuries [12]. Available documentation indicates that the gas line crack that caused the accident was brittle-like. 

An accident complicated by fog, weak winds, and a surface inversion occurred in Poza Rica, Mexico, in the early morning of November 24, 1950, when hydrogen sulfide was released from a plant for the recovery of sulfur from natural gas. There were 22 deaths, and 320 persons were hospitalized. 

The mining facility consists of four major operations 1) mining, ore extraction and transportation, 2) ore processing - treatment with chemical solvents to remove minerals, 3) removing impurities and 4) utilities e.g., electricity, steam, water, air and natural gas provided by the facility s power plant and by off-site suppliers. Accidents in any of these operations can stop the whole process. 

Lewis (1989) describes the accident, which occurred in Siberia on the night of June 3 and early hours of June 4, 1989. Late on June 3, 1989, engineers in charge of the 0.7 m (28 in.) pipeline, which carried natural gas liquids from the gas fields in western Siberia to chemical plants in Ufa in the Urals, noticed a sudden drop in pressure at the pumping end of the pipeline. It appears that the engineers responded by increasing the pumping rate in order to maintain normal pipeline pressure. 

Accident Risk in U.S. Commercial Nuclear Power Plants (WASH-1400). An Analysis of Reportable Incidents for Natural Gas 4.7-19... 

Some accidents can be attributed to structural failures. On October 20, 1944, one of the four liquid gas tanks at tlie East Ohio Gas Company in Cleveland began to leak. The plant converted natural gas to tlie liquid form, which was stored for emergency use in holding tanks. If needed, tlie liquefied product could be reconverted to its gaseous state tuid fed into the city distribution lines. The tanks were constructed in 1941 and luid a capacity of more tlian 400,000 cubic feet of liquid. 

The fear of accidents like Chernobyl, and the high cost of nuclear waste disposal, halted nuclear power plant construction in the United States m the 1980s, and in most ol the rest ol the world by the 1990s. Because nuclear fusion does not present the waste disposal problem of fission reactors, there is hope that fusion will be the primary energy source late in the twenty-first centuiy as the supplies of natural gas and petroleum dwindle. 

Coal is one of the major fuels in Ukraine where its environmental impact is much higher than that of nuclear energy, provided that there are no accidents. Yet there is no alternative to coal, for natural gas can only cover the most urgent household and industrial needs, not to mention the country s indebtedness for its imports. The question of environment-friendly combustion of coal is therefore highly topical. 

For quantitative prognosis of emission rate from natural gas pipeline Yamal-West both emission from possible accidents and stationary sources were taken into account (Chernyaev et al., 1991). 

The world use of nuclear power to supply a nation s electricity varies widely by country. France, for example, gets around 75% of its electricity from nuclear power, and several other European countries get over half of their energy from this source. Approximately 20% of the electricity in the United States comes from 103 operating nuclear power plants. Nuclear is second only to coal, 50%, and ahead of natural gas, 15%, hydropower, 8%, and oil, 3%, as a source of electrical energy. Although once hailed by President Eisenhower in the 1950s as a safe, clean, and economical source of power, the US. nuclear industry has fallen on hard times in the last twenty-five years. Nuclear accidents at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania,... 

Between 1985 and 1991,1726 natural gas pipeline ruptures andleakages were reported in the United States. These incidents resulted in 634 injuries and 131 fatalities. Third-party damage was the most common cause of these incidents, followed by corrosion. The GAO believes that the corrosion-related incidents can be reduced with the use of smart pigs (46). U.S. DOT 1992 accident statistics showed that 52.5% of U.S. oil spills involving loss of at least 1590 m3 came from pipeline accidents, comparable to the worldwide statistic of 51.5%. The U.S. DOT regulated 344,575 km of liquids pipelines during the 10-yr study period and received reports on 1901 accidents during that time thus the number of failures per year per 1000 miles was 0.888, of which 27% was due to corrosion and 31% to outside forces (48). 

The alternate interface still requires a high temperature heat source to power the heat exchanger HX2 in Figure 2. However, this heat source is now envisioned to be electrical heaters or a hydrogen or natural gas combustor in place of reactor heat. The link to the reactor has been broken allowing for improved temperature control and limiting HX2 to a role as an accident initiator in the chemical plant rather than the combined plant. 

The first time that liquids were recovered from a natural gas stream probably happened more by accident than by design. Any time a gas stream from a liquid-gas separator is either cooled or compressed, liquids will form. This simple statement still provides the... 

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