| Title: | Risk assessment of occupational exposure to benzene using numerical simulation in a complex geometry of a reforming unit of petroleum refinery |
| Author(s): | Bayatian M; Ashrafi K; Azari MR; Jafari MJ; Mehrabi Y; |
| Address: | "School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. khashrafi@ut.ac.ir. Safety Promotion and Injury Prevention Research Center and School of Public Health, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. mrazari@sbmu.ac.ir" |
| Journal Title: | Environ Sci Pollut Res Int |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s11356-018-1318-6 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 1614-7499 (Electronic) 0944-1344 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "There has been an increasing concern about the continuous and the sudden release of volatile organic pollutants from petroleum refineries and occupational and environmental exposures. Benzene is one of the most prevalent volatile compounds, and it has been addressed by many authors for its potential toxicity in occupational and environmental settings. Due to the complexities of sampling and analysis of benzene in routine and accidental situations, a reliable estimation of the benzene concentration in the outdoor setting of refinery using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) could be instrumental for risk assessment of occupational exposure. In the present work, a computational fluid dynamic model was applied for exposure risk assessment with consideration of benzene being released continuously from a reforming unit of a refinery. For simulation of benzene dispersion, GAMBIT, FLUENT, and CFD post software are used as preprocessing, processing, and post-processing, respectively. Computational fluid dynamic validation was carried out by comparing the computed data with the experimental measurements. Eventually, chronic daily intake and lifetime cancer risk for routine operations through the two seasons of a year are estimated through the simulation model. Root mean square errors are 0.19 and 0.17 for wind speed and concentration, respectively. Lifetime risk assessments of workers are 0.4-3.8 and 0.0096-0.25 per 1000 workers in stable and unstable atmospheric conditions, respectively. Exposure risk is unacceptable for the head of shift work, chief engineer, and general workers in 141 days (38.77%) in a year. The results of this study show that computational fluid dynamics is a useful tool for modeling of benzene exposure in a complex geometry and can be used to estimate lifetime risks of occupation groups in a refinery setting" |
| Keywords: | Benzene/analysis/*toxicity Computer Simulation Environmental Exposure Humans *Occupational Exposure/analysis *Oil and Gas Industry *Petroleum/analysis Risk Assessment Seasons Benzene Chronic daily intake Fluent Lifetime risk Numerical simulation Reforming; |
| Notes: | "MedlineBayatian, Majid Ashrafi, Khosro Azari, Mansour Rezazadeh Jafari, Mohammad Javad Mehrabi, Yadollah eng Germany 2018/02/09 Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2018 Apr; 25(12):11364-11375. doi: 10.1007/s11356-018-1318-6. Epub 2018 Feb 7" |
