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 Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Kuwait, P.O. Box 5969, Safat 13060, Kuwait

ABSTRACT

In this paper, it is discussed how a fatal incident took place in a simple Diesel-oil discharge process due to poor design and violation of safety precautions. An explosion of a Diesel-oil barrel under pressure which killed the operator is analyzed and the main reasons causing the pressurization are presented.The study covers all the possible causes of explosion for this case and how violent each could be. It was shown that the discharge method would tend to explode the barrel when it was nearly empty, the case where the explosion is more violent.A finite element analysis on the barrel was conducted and showed that not much pressure was required for failure. It is of the order of 5% of that which the compressor provides.