Analysis of accidents in biogas production and upgrading

• A database of 169 accidents involving biogas was built and analysed.
• Gas releases, fires and explosions were the major accidents scenarios identified.
• The trend of accidents is growing faster than that of biogas production.
• Multi Correspondence Analysis was used to correlate causes and scenarios.
• A risk profile falling in the ALARP region is associated to biogas production facilities.

In the last 10 years biogas production tripled, resulting in an increasing number of related facilities. The present study addresses safety issues of such activity on the basis of past accident analysis. A database of accidents related to biogas supply chain was created and data on 169 accidents were collected from different literature sources. Trends, causes of accidents, scenarios, and consequences were analysed also using Multi Correspondence Analysis to obtain correlations between causes of accidents and scenarios. The study showed that almost 12% of the past accident analysed can be classified as major accidents. The number of accidents is growing faster than biogas production. A risk assessment was carried, based on the analysis of accident frequencies and consequences. A non-negligible risk profile, typical of ALARP zone, was obtained for this industrial sector, revealing an emerging risk issue. The main lessons learnt are the need of developing and adopting specific safety standards and of improving the safety culture and risk awareness in the biogas production sector.