The main objective of this document is to define a philosophy to determine suitable separation distances for all equipment, pipework and storage to allow member companies to develop consistent standards across the industry.
This publication describes the basic principles to calculate appropriate safety and separation distances for the industrial gases industry. It is intended that EIGA members use this publication as an aid to writing or revising any publications that involve specifying safety and separation distances for safe equipment layout.
Historically, the term safety distance has been used for an effect-based distance. This is consequence based and gives conservative safety distances. Because of increasing density of industrial installations, there is a need for more realistic safety distances. This has led to risk-based safety distances.
Determination of safety and separation distances is a subject that requires detailed knowledge of risk and consequence modelling and as such this publication should only be used by specialists with this knowledge.
The work process can be used for the equipment required for industrial and medical gases. These can be in cryogenic liquid, pressurised liquid or the gaseous phase. This publication is intended to be applied to new installations and may be used for both existing, and modifications to existing, installations to assess safety and separation distances.
Offsite transport and pipelines are not specifically addressed here.
The document is available here.
European Industrial Gases Association March 2021
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