This research is aimed at assessing the quantitative risks involved with an ethanol
pipeline. Pipelines that run from the Midwest, where the vast majority of ethanol is
produced, to the target areas where reformulated gasoline is required (California, Texas
Gulf Coast, New England Atlantic Coast) will be of particular interest. The goal is to
conduct a quantitative risk assessment on the pipeline, truck, and rail transportation
modes to these areas. As a result of the quantitative risk assessment, we are able to
compare the risk associated with the different modes of transportation for ethanol. In
order to perform and compare the quantitative risk assessment, the following challenges
are addressed:
• Identify target areas requiring reformulated gasoline
• Map detailed route for each transportation mode to all three target areas
• Perform a quantitative risk assessment for each transportation mode
• Compare quantitative risk assessment results for each route and transportation
mode
The focus is on California, Texas Gulf Coast, and New England Atlantic Coast
because of the large volume. It is beneficial to look at these areas as opposed to the smaller areas because pipeline transportation requires very large volumes. In order to
find a meaningful comparison between all three transportation modes, only the areas
with the three large volumes were evaluated. Since the risk assessment is completed
using historical data, each route is segmented in a way that is consistent with the data
that is available.
All of the curves support the hypothesis that pipeline transportation poses the least
societal risk when transporting ethanol from the Midwest to target areas. Rail
transportation poses the largest amount of societal risk. While overall rail incidents are
not as frequent as road incidents, the frequency of a fatality is much higher when an
incident does occur.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2032 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Shelton Davis, Anecia Delaine |
| Contributors | Mannan, M.S. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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