The application of risk-based inspections on furnace high-pressure cooling systems incorporating proportional hazards and steam explosion consequence modelling

Purpose Steam explosions are a major safety concern in many modern furnaces. The explosions are sometimes caused by water ingress into the furnace from leaks in its high-pressure (HP) cooling water system, coming into contact with molten matte. To address such safety issues related to steam explosions, risk based inspection (RBI) is suggested in this paper. RBI is presently one of the best-practice methodologies to provide an inspection schedule and ensure the mechanical integrity of pressure vessels. The application of RBIs on furnace HP cooling systems in this work is performed by incorporating the proportional hazards model (PHM) with the RBI approach; the PHM uses real-time condition data to allow dynamic decision-making on inspection and maintenance planning. Design/methodology/approach To accomplish this, a case study is presented that applies an HP cooling system data with moisture and cumulated feed rate as covariates or condition indicators to compute the probability of failure and the consequence of failure (CoF), which is modelled based on the boiling liquid-expanding vapour explosion (BLEVE) theory. Findings The benefit of this approach is that the risk assessment introduces real-time condition data in addition to time-based failure information to allow improved dynamic decision-making for inspection and maintenance planning of the HP cooling system. The work presented here comprises the application of the newly proposed methodology in the context of pressure vessels, considering the important challenge of possible explosion accidents due to BLEVE as the CoF calculations. Research limitations/implications This paper however aims to optimise the inspection schedule on the HP cooling system, by incorporating PHM into the RBI methodology, as was recently proposed in the literature by Lelo et al . (2022). Moisture and cumulated feed rate are used as covariate. At the end, risk mitigation policy is suggested. Originality/value In this paper, the proposed methodology yields a dynamically calculated quantified risk, which emphasised the imperative for mitigating the risk, as well as presents a number of mitigation options, to quantifiably affect such mitigation.