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Fires may impact on process and storage equipment causing severe damages and potential accident escalation. Passive protections, based on the application of fireproofing coatings, are usually implemented in order to prevent or mitigate such events. The choice and the design of this type of barriers is a critical task due to the extreme heat exposure conditions. Besides, the behaviour of the protective material may significantly change during the fire exposure and relevant thermal properties (thermal conductivity and density) are subjected to strong modifications. In the present study, a methodological approach, integrating experimental and modelling activities, was proposed for the assessment of inorganic fireproofing materials. The typical coating materials, applied in both industrial and transport units were selected. The variation of the most relevant thermal properties of the coatings were derived obtaining detailed correlation models for their description. A Finite Element Model (FEM) was developed in order to reproduce the behaviour of real scale insulated equipment exposed to fire. Specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) allowed optimizing the design of the fireproofing material.

Future energy scenarios envisage a widespread use of hydrogen as energy vector. Installations handling and storing relevant quantities of hydrogen will probably spread around the territory, both in industrial sites and residential areas, arising concerns on the safety aspects. In the present contribution, a novel consequence-based approach is applied to the inherent safety assessment of hydrogen production and distribution system. Alternative scenarios were assessed for the hydrogen system chain from large scale production to final small scale users. Hydrogen transportation and delivery was included in the analysis, introducing a rather innovative aspect for quantitative inherent safety analysis. The inherent safety fingerprint of the system is quantified by a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which take into account the actual analysis of expected consequences and the safety performance of the equipment. Several case studies were defined to populate the chain systems, considering both commercial technologies and novel alternatives. The KPIs showed the possi-ble safety improvements switching from conventional to alternative technologies as well as critical safety is-sues that call for their future development.