Analysis of the Fire and Explosion at the Girard Point Refinery

A fire and subsequent explosion occurred at approximately 4:22am on June 21, 2019, at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Girard Point Refinery, see fig. 1.1. The explosion took place in the V1 treater-feed-surge-drum (TFSD) within the pretreatment unit. The TFSD explosion propelled a 41809.6lb (18964.5kg) piece of the steel drum approximately 2100 f t (640m) from the blast seat, see fig. 1.2. It is hypothesized that a boiling-liquid expanding-vapor explosion (BLEVE) event generated the blast wave and broke the drum into fragments. The Philadelphia Fire Department requested ATF estimate the blast overpressure, debris throw, and thermal effects generated when the tank exploded. This paper will estimate these blast parameters assuming a BLEVE occurred. The analysis is based upon an adiabatic and isentropic energy analysis developed by the Center for Chemical Process Safety . Analysis was completed using Jupyter Notebook running Python 3.7 and published using ipypublish.

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