• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.305-316
• /
• 2022

Hydrogen energy is emerging as an alternative to the depletion of fossil fuels and environmental problems, and the use of hydrogen vehicles is increasing in the automobile industry as well. However, since hydrogen has a wide flammability limit of 4 to 75%, there is a high concern about safety in case of a hydrogen car accident. In particular, in semi-enclosed spaces such as tunnels and underground parking lots, a fire or explosion accompanied by hydrogen leakage is highly likely to cause a major accident. Therefore, it is necessary to review hydrogen safety through analysis of flammability areas caused by hydrogen leakage. Therefore, in this study, the effect of the air velocity in the tunnel on the flammability area was investigated by analyzing the hydrogen concentration according to the hydrogen leakage conditions of hydrogen vehicles and the air velocity in the tunnel in a road tunnel with standard section. Hydrogen leakage conditions were set as one tank leaking and three tanks leaking through the TPRD at the same time and a condition in which a large crack occurred and leaked. And the air velocity in the tunnel were considered 0, 1, 2.5, and 4.0 m/s. As a result of the analysis of the flammability area, it is shown that when the air velocity of 1 m/s or more exists, it is reduced by up to 25% compared to the case of air velocity of 0 m/s. But there is little effect of reducing the flammability area according to the increase of the wind speed. In particular, when a large crack occurs and completely leaks in about 2.5 seconds, the flammability area slightly increases as the air velocity increases. It was found that in the case of downward ejection, hydrogen gas remains under the vehicle for a considerably long time.

• Fire Science and Engineering
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.61-73
• /
• 2017

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster in 2011 and California Power Failure in 2001 are examples of the importance of the power plant safety management that caused huge national loss with a power-related mass casualty incident. In a situation where humans cannot live without electricity, efforts to strengthen the systematic firefighting safety management in power plants that produce electricity with large amounts of hazardous materials as fuel, such as nuclear energy, coal and gas, are essential to protect life and prevent property loss and stable economic growth from fire explosion accident or radiation leak due to the negligence of safety management and natural disasters such as earthquakes, which has recently become an issue. This study examined the operating situation of firefighting safety management in power plants with firefighting officials employed by five power generation companies including Korea Southern Power Co., Ltd. and Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. Ltd., which are in charge of the domestic power supply. As a result, for the systematic firefighting safety management of power plants, improvement plans were drawn, including the development of an effective business manual and a comprehensive management system, the substantiality of firefighting safety education, and the strengthening of seismic designs to prepare for earthquakes.

• Journal of the Ergonomics Society of Korea
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.99-108
• /
• 2011

Almost all companies have paid much attention to the safety management ranging from maintenance to operation even at the stage of designing in order to prevent accidents, but fatal accidents continue to increase throughout the world. In particular, it is essential to systematically prevent such fatal accidents as fire, explosion or leakage of toxic gas at factories in order to not only protect the workers and neighbors but also prevent economic losses and environmental pollution. Though it is well known that accident probability is very low in NPP(Nuclear Power Plants), the reason why many researches are still being performed about the accidents is the results may be so severe. HRA is the main process to make preparation for possibility of human error in designing of the NPP. But those techniques have some problems and limitation as follows; the evaluation sensitivity of those techniques are out of date. And the evaluation of human error is not coupled with the design process. Additionally, the scope of the human error which has to be included in reliability assessment should be expanded. This work focuses on the coincidence of human error and mechanical failure for some important performance shaping factors to propose a method for improving safety effectively of the process industries. In order to apply in these purposes into the thesis, I found 63 critical Performance Shaping Factors of the eight dimensions throughout studies that I executed earlier. In this study, various analysis of opinion of specialists(Personal Factors, Training, Knowledge or Experience, Procedures and Documentation, Information, Communications, HMI, Workplace Design, Quality of Environment, Team Factors) and the guideline for construction of PSF were accomplished. The selected method was AHP which simplifies objective conclusions by maintaining consistency. This research focused on the implementation process of PSF to evaluate the process of PSF at each phase. As a result, we propose an evaluation model of PSF as a tool to find critical problem at each phase and improve on how to resolve the problems found at each phase. This evaluation model makes it possible to extraction of PSF succesfully by presenting the basis of assessment which will be used by enterprises to minimize the trial and error of construction process of PSF.