Novel exterior cover design for radiant heat resistance of firefighting robots in large-scale petrochemical complex fires

ROBOMECH Journal

Table 1 Recent serious disasters in Japan with difficult-to-extinguish fires

Date	Location	Disaster type	Number of casualties	Notes
September 2003 [4, 5]	Idemitsu Kosan Co., Ltd Hokkaido Refinery	Crude oil and naphtha tank fire	0 dead 0 injured	The floating roof sank due to the long-period vibration of the earthquake, and the whole tank caught fire. We had to wait for the contents to burn out while cooling the tank and preventing it from collapsing, and it kept burning for 44 h
March 2011 [6, 7]	Cosmo Oil Co., Ltd Chiba Refinery	LPG tank fire explosion accident	0 dead 6 injured	BLEVE^a was generated, and the large-scale explosion of the tank occurred successively. It was very difficult to extinguish the fire because of the radiant heat from the flame and the danger of explosion
September 2012 [8]	Nippon Shokubai Co., Ltd Himeji Plant	explosion accident	1 dead 36 injured	An explosion occurred at a chemical plant due to an abnormal temperature rise, and a firefighter died

^aBoiling liquid expanding vapor explosion (BLEVE): a phenomenon in which a tank ruptures in a state in which a liquid stored in a pressurized container (gas tank) is heated by a fire; the internal pressure of the tank drops rapidly to atmospheric pressure, causing the liquid to boil and become a gas, causing an explosion. If this is a combustible substance and is mixed with air and ignited, the power of the explosion becomes enormous, and the damage becomes even more significant