DEVELOPMENT OF A GAS-BASED APPLICATION FOR FIRE MODELING IN THE PROCESS INDUSTRIES

The major hazards with which the chemical industry is concerned are fire, explosion and
toxic release. Of these three, fire is the most common. In assessing the damage potential
and causes or errors which have led to these disasters, an analysis has to be done. The
impacts of fires in the process industries may be predicted by the application of
mathematical models. However, the applications of these models require competency in
mathematics and computer programming. Therefore, the objective of this project is to
develop an application called the Fire Simulation Tool (FiST), which is able to study the
impact of fire in the process industry. The scope of work for this project is confmed to
fire cases only, which are: flash fire, jet fire, pool fire and fireball.
The FiST application is developed using Visual Basic (VB) programming language with
integration of GIS tools. The mathematical models of the four types of fire are simulated
and the results are integrated to GIS for better visualization. The development is done by
customizing MapObjects using VB. With MapObjects user can incorporate mapping
capabilities in their application.
The methodology of the project includes utilizing established models in order to
calculate the impact of fire. The development of this software has been divided into five
different stages, which are planning the application, building the graphical user interface
(GUI), writing the computer programme, software validation and verification and lastly,
integrating the results from the tool with GIS application to present the simulation
outcome as buffer zones around the centre of the accident.
The results from FiST software is verified and validated with other risk assessment
softwares such as: FRED (developed by Shell Global company, 2004), BIS (developed
by ThermDyne Technologies Ltd, 2003) and SCIA (developed by EI-Harbawi, 2006)
and with established data. The software is capable to estimate the thermal radiation and
the impacts from the fire scenarios which include the probability of frrst, second and
third degree of bums for the hmnan skin. The FiST application is useful and feasible
because it is user-friendly, able to function as a stand-alone application and it is
compatible with all windows operating system. Furthermore, the cost of developing the
software is cheap and the application incorporates the risk tolerability limit for Malaysia.