Who says a control room has to be a bunker? Spaciousness and brightness are now possible!
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The central control room is designed to be non-explosion-proof, and it’s no longer built like a bunker. Do you think that’s okay? We work like white-collar workers, sitting in spacious and bright offices to operate the systems; this reduces construction costs, improves the working environment for employees, and brings them joy both physically and mentally! Sure, sure, sure! ! The third-party professional evaluation agency for a certain coal chemical project also put forward the following 4 suggestions. First, since other explosion scenarios such as explosions of other containers, dust explosions, and BLEVE (where liquid boils into gas and, upon container rupture, the release of that gas causes an explosion), as well as the impact of fires and gas leaks on the control room, were not taken into account during the assessment, the control room in this project is still exposed to the effects of fires, explosions, and gas dispersion. Therefore, it is recommended that the control room have no doors, windows, or openings facing the equipment side ； Install gas detection alarms at the fresh air inlets in the control room. Secondly, in order to minimize leakage and reduce the amount of vapor cloud involved in the explosion, it is recommended to install appropriate remotely controlled emergency isolation valves at the boundaries of the facility and at the connections of various systems within the facility that contain large amounts of flammable, explosive, or volatile materials. Third, considering that in the event of a major leakage from the device, its flammable and explosive vapor clouds could spread into enclosed buildings, the design should include additional early warning and protective measures. Fourth, ensure proper control and management of ignition sources, maintain good ventilation, and avoid the accumulation of flammable and explosive gases as much as possible. At the same time, safety facilities such as combustible gas detection and alarm interlocks should be installed to prevent flammable and explosive gases from entering the cabinet room. In summary, the owner ultimately decided not to adopt blast-resistant design for the control room, primarily in order to optimize the investment in its construction and improve the operating conditions there. Although the control room in this project does not feature blast-resistant design, the owner made a rational decision after conducting a thorough safety assessment of blast resistance; this approach not only reduced unnecessary investment costs but also ensured that the blast-resistant capabilities of the control room were properly understood. Such an approach is worth promoting in the field of coal chemical industry! ! Conduct a proper safety assessment and turn the central control room into a spacious and bright office – will you support this?
A comfortable operating environment helps operators work better! Loving the factory as one’s own home is not just an empty slogan; only by treating the factory as one’s own home can everyone serve the enterprise better! :lol
Since the explosion scenario has not been considered, how can there be an assessment?
There are design requirements specifying whether the central control room should have an explosion-proof design. I once saw a wealthy man build a control room on a slope, 200 meters away from the equipment, without using any explosion-proof design.
It’s difficult to estimate how much of a chemical plant should be destroyed, how it should be destroyed, and to what extent. It’s hard to carry out **targeted blasting at the moment; therefore, a design that provides resistance to explosions is a better option
Bunkers must be built; without them, what will we do if something goes wrong? Just saying that assessments and alarms will help – how effective is that? Explosions are unpredictable; even if the alarms go off, there’s nothing you can do when an explosion occurs. Is it really spacious and bright? With a boom, it turned into flat ground. Inside the control room, there are DCS control cabinets; if those cabinets fall over, it becomes impossible to carry out control from the center, and it’s not possible to stop losses in a timely manner – be careful of cascading failures! Boom! Boom! Safety means providing 100% protection in order to address even a 1% possibility of risk.
It seems difficult to calculate the explosive equivalent of chemical plants, so whether the control room needs blast resistance is also a topic of discussion. The cause of the explosion at a natural gas station in Shandong some time ago was the leakage of natural gas into the control room, which led to an explosion. It is worth exploring how to enable operators in the control room to work safely, conveniently, and happily
Personally, I think it’s sufficient to design the computer room with blast-resistant walls. These days, many control centers are built as integrated structures, and it makes little sense for the entire building to be blast-resistant.
Technical specifications already exist for the design of control rooms. With the development of large-scale projects in petrochemicals, coal chemistry, and other fields over the years, CCR design has made significant progress in terms of user-friendliness, in addition to complying with relevant specifications. First, information technology and hardware technologies have a high level of complexity, and their applicability is improving continuously ； Second, the experience and skills of designers and builders have improved, and more factors are taken into consideration during the design process. The appearance of traditional fortress-style control rooms is now rare; the control rooms in some new projects are comparable to those in high-end offices. Control rooms such as those at Dalian Petrochemical, Yunnan Refining, and Tianjin Zhongke are already very impressive.
This post was last edited by qugd on 2017-7-27 at 13:31. Considering explosion protection does not conflict with designing the control room to be beautiful and comfortable. Different chemical plants, different locations, and various environmental conditions are all foreseeable and can be controlled during the design process. By implementing appropriate preventive measures, using standard-compliant instrumentation, cables, and other products, along with safety detection methods that meet the local and regional explosion-proof requirements, it is not difficult to create a control room that is beautiful, comfortable, and user-friendly.
It’s fine to design and construct according to standard specifications; in that case, no one will be held accountable if something goes wrong. But if the specifications aren’t followed and changes are made arbitrarily, problems will arise and one will have to take responsibility for them. The control room is also spacious and bright, without any conflict with explosion-proof requirements; if one insists on having many windows facing the equipment area, then that’s just creating unnecessary problems. It seems some people have not remembered the lesson from last year, when an explosion in a steam pipeline at a coal gangue power plant cooked people inside the building.