Fire Safety | Case study of Buncefield Accident

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Introduction
Large amount of fuel are being transported increasingly around the world and their storage done
in the ports, manufacturing complexes, storage depots among others leading to the creation of
high densities exceptionally. Any uncontrolled loss of containment as well as flammable mixture
ignition could lead to devastating consequences. Some of the possible consequences include
explosions and intense fore which may extent to several kilometers (Hosseinnia, Khakza and
Reniers 2018). Some of the examples of large flammable gases and liquids release as well as one
nuclear release have been summarized in the table below.
Site Description
Buncefield oil storage depot is the fifth largest storage site in Great Britain. Its location is 40km
north of London. This is an area near Hemel Hempstead town in the county of Hertfordshire. The
storage capacity has been estimated to be about 150,000 tons of fuel. This includes gasoline, fuel

oil, and kerosene. The total capacity is thus 273,000 m3. The deport has been distinctively
known for the supply of kerosene through infrastructure of pipelines to areas like Heathrow and
London's Luton airports with the former being the busiest and the largest. There has also been an
implementation of the system backup in the case of the case of their supply systems.
Figure 1: Site layout
The depot of the oil storage is known to house three companies as indicated in the diagram
above. This constitutes three pipes for the supply as well as two pipelines used for the purposes
of the distribution. The site of the company where there was occurrence of the accident is
basically divided into two sections.

The Western part: It covers at least 16 fuel oil tanks with the; capacity of about 58,000 m3. This
is stationed along with the stations of the truck filling, installations of the pipeline receptions
with at least control room and 3 smaller admixture tanks.
The Eastern part: It has seven kerosene and fuel oil tanks with the total capacity of 26000m3.
The operation of the company is usually for a period of 24hrs. The oil storage depot which is
ranked second is located between the western and the eastern sites of the company which
incurred the losses. This particular depot had been authorized to handle a capacity of 70,000 tons
of fuel.
The accident
Events sequence
At around 7:00p.m on the month of December 10th there was reception of unleaded gasoline by
Tank 912. This particular tank is located in the company’s first storage area marked as area, A.
The delivery was done at an inflow rate of about 550 550 m3 /hr.
On December 11, at around midnight there was closure of the storage site with the verification of
the inventory being underway. There was indication of a stable of stable volume at the capacity
of 2/3 by Tank 912 at around 3:00 a.m. In the meanwhile, the delivery of the supply was
maintained at the same rate of flow. Tank 912 began to overflow at around 5:20a.m. This was
characterized by the formation of a high concentration of air/fuel mixture.
There was halting of a parallel supply delivery of another tank at 5:50a.m. This basically implied
that Tank 912 had its inflow rate at 890 m3 /hr. The supply valve of the tank however remained
opened.