Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

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Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jlp

Risk-based inspection for large-scale crude oil tanks

Jian Shuai*, Kejiang Han, Xuerui Xu
College of Mechanical and Transportation Engineering, China University of Petroleum-Beijing, 18 Fuxue Road, Changping, 102249 Beijing, China

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 8 June 2011
Received in revised form
7 August 2011
Accepted 8 August 2011

Periodic Internal Inspection Method often results in under-inspection or over-inspection for large-scale
crude oil tank. Therefore, how to determine reasonable internal inspection interval (INTII) has great
signicance on balancing the safe operation requirement and inspection cost for crude oil tanks. Here,
RBI (risk-based inspection) technology is used to quantitatively assess the risk of crude oil tanks in an oil
depot in China. The risk comparison between tank shell and bottom shows that the risk of tank depends
on the risk of tank bottom. The prediction procedure of INTII for crude oil tanks is also presented. The
INTII predicted by RBI method is gradually extended with the increasing of the acceptable risk level. The
method to determine the acceptable risk of crude oil tanks is proposed, by which 3.54E04 are taken as
the acceptable risk of the oil depot. The safety factor of 0.8 is proposed to determine the nal INTIIs for 18
crude oil tanks. The INTII requirement in China code SY/T 5921, 5e7 years, is very conservative and lower
than predicted service life of tanks. The INTIIs predicted by Gumbel method are smaller than by RBI
method for tanks with short INTII. Therefore, this paper recommends RBI method to predict the INTII for
crude oil tanks.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Internal inspection interval
Risk
RBI
The acceptable risk
Gumbel extreme value distribution

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of petroleum and chemical
industry, storage tank plays an increasing role in the storage of
crude oil. Owing to the advantages of saving steel, saving occupied
area and cost-effective construction, large-scale atmospheric
storage tanks are widely used (Bai & Liu, 1995; Jiang & Li, 2005; Li,
1996). However, these large-scale crude oil tanks have high
potential risk. Once the leakage of large-scale crude oil tank
happens, it not only causes serious environmental pollution, but
also in some cases causes re and even casualties.
Inspection of tank is intended to assess the tank integrity and
identify the problem that may lead to future loss of integrity. The
inspection can provide the information of deterioration state of
tank plates and reduce risk uncertainty of crude oil tank. Currently,
Periodic Internal Inspection is widely used by Chinas petroleum
and chemical industry for the management of crude oil tanks. In
China, the code SY/T 5921 (Oil and Gas Storage and Transportation
Standardization Technical Committee in China, 2000) has specic
requirement for INTII: for crude oil tank it is generally 5e7 years;
the maximum INTII for the new tank cannot exceed 10 years.
However, the Periodic Internal Inspection Method often results in

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: shuaij@cup.edu.cn (J. Shuai).
0950-4230/$ e see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jlp.2011.08.004

two short-comings for tanks management. On the one hand, due to

the high-capacity of crude oil tank, it is expensive and timeconsuming to clear and inspect tank, which can inuence the
normal production of oil depot. If the tanks without severe corrosion defects are opened to inspect, it will cause unnecessary
inspection cost and business interruption loss. On the other hand, if
the tanks with high risk are not timely inspected and repaired, it
will bring potential safety hazard, and even in some cases crude oil
leakage may happens (Dai, Li, & Long, 2002; Guo et al., 2010).
Therefore, the determination of a reasonable inspection interval
not only can reduce inspection costs and nancial loss for business
interruption, but also avoid environmental cost, component
damage caused by the leak of tank.
RBI is a risk assessment and management process which
provides a methodology for determining the optimum inspection
methods and frequencies. According to the fact that a large percent
of the total risk concentrate on a relatively small percent of the
equipment items or units, RBI can identify the high-risk and lowrisk tanks, and focus inspection resource on high-risk tanks. On
the premise of ensuring the safe operation of tanks, RBI can extend
the INTII of low-risk tanks, which reduce the shutdown frequencies
and improve the economic efciency of oil depot. Therefore, the RBI
method is better to balance the safe operation requirement of crude
oil tanks and inspection costs. RBI method has been successfully
applied on renery and processing piping (Chang, Chang, Shua, &
Lin, 2005) and pressure safety valves (Chien, Chen, & Chao, 2009).

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

Less work is reported on the prediction of INTII for crude oil

storage tank. Most of them focus on Corrosion Rate Method (Li,
Wang, & Yang, 2005) and Reliability Analysis (Liu, 2005; Shuai &
Han, 2010; Xiao, Liu, & Qu, 2005). In this paper, RBI technology
is used to predict the INTII of crude oil tanks in an oil depot in
China.
2. Risk assessment method of RBI
American Petroleum Institute (API) issue two standards for RBI:
API 580 (API, 2002) risk-based inspection and API 581 (API, 2008)
Risk-Based Inspection Base Resource Document. Recently, The
European Committee for Standardization (2008) develops riskbased inspection and maintenance procedures for European
Industry (RIMAP).
In RBI, the risk is the product of the probability of failure (POF)
and the consequence of failure (COF), and also is a function of time.
The equation for risk calculation is showed as following:

Riskt Pf t  FC

167

(1)

where the POF (Pf(t)) is a function of time, and increases as the

damage in the component due to thinning or other damage
mechanisms accumulate with time. The COF (FC) is the nancial
consequence based on economic losses. Only component damage,
product loss, and environmental penalties are considered in the
consequence analysis of failure for atmospheric storage tank.
In RBI, the POF is computed by Equation (2). The procedure in
Fig. 1 is used to determine the POF for crude oil tank.

Pf t gff  Df t  FMS

(2)

where gff (Generic Failure Frequency) represents a POF developed

for specic component types, but do not reect the true failure
frequency for a specic component subject to a specic damage
mechanism. Df(t) (damage factor) is an adjustment factor applied to
account for damage mechanisms that are active in a component,
which modies the industry gff and makes it specic to the

Fig. 1. The calculation procedure for POF.

168

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

Table 1
Probability and nancial-based consequence categories in API RBI.
Probability category

Consequence category

Category

Range

Category

Range ($)

1
2
3
4
5

Df(t)  2
2 < Df(t)  20
20 < Df(t)  100
100 < Df(t)  1000
Df(t) > 1000

A
B
C
D
E

FC  10 000
10 000 < FC  100 000
100 000 < FC  1 000 000
1 000 000 < FC  10 000 000
FC > 10 000 000

component under evaluation. FMS (Management Systems Factor)

represents the effect of the facilitys management system on the
mechanical integrity of the plant equipment.
Probability and Consequence Categories in API 581 are shown in
Table 1, in which Probability Categories are divided by the magnitude of the total damage factor. API 581 uses a risk matrix showed
in Fig. 2 to present the risk distribution of different components.
3. Risk assessments and ranking for crude oil tanks
3.1. Brief description of large-scale crude oil tanks
Much data were collected to assess the risk of crude oil tanks,
such as, original design and construction drawings, previous
inspection reports and modications/repairs records of crude oil
tanks. The basic information for crude oil tanks are showed in
Table 2. There are a total of 38 crude oil tanks in an oil depot in
China marked as Tank 1e38, in which Tank 35, 36, 37 and 38 have
the capacity of 100 000 m3 and the others 34 tanks have the
capacity of 50 000 m3. 19 Tanks were inspected and repaired at
different time (Tank 3 and 6 with twice inspections), in which the
inspection data of Tank 8 was lost. Digital ultrasonic thickness
gauge were used to measure the wall thickness of tank plates. The
tank bottom plates also were scanned by Floormap VS MFL. As the
inspection data of crude oil tanks are very huge, it is not introduced
in this paper.
3.2. Risk assessment result of crude oil tanks
Table 3 and Fig. 3 show the risk assessment results of 37 crude
oil tanks in risk matrix. The tanks with the same capacity in the oil
depot have the same design geometry, underground structure, the
surrounding environment and management method, so the
calculated COFs for these tanks are the same. The COFs of bottom
and shell for Tank 35, 36, 37 and 38 are 1.1137E06$ and

Fig. 2. Risk matrix.

1.8601E05$, respectively, which correspond to consequences

category D and C in Table 1; the COFs of the tanks with capacity of
50 000 m3 are 5.5968E05$ and 1.0039E05$, respectively, which
correspond to consequences category C.
It can be seen from Table 3 that POF of tank bottom is higher
than that of tank shell. The main reason is that the tank shell has
larger plate thickness and lower corrosion rate than that of tank
bottom. Fig. 3 and Table 3 presents that the risks of tank shell for all
tanks are Medium Risk in Risk Matrix. Due to high COF (consequence category D), the risks of bottom plate for Tank 36, 37 and 38
in risk matrix are Medium High risks, which account for 4.8% of
total items.
3.3. The ranking for crude oil tanks
One of the purposes of risk analysis based on RBI is to rank the
relative risks of facilities, units, systems, equipment or components
in a plant. Based on the result of risk ranking, RBI can identify high,
medium and low-risk items, and then determine equipment that
does not require inspection or select risk mitigation measure for
high-risk equipment. So inspection and maintenance activities can
be concentrated and more cost-effective. According to the calculation procedure of POF showed in Fig. 1, wall thickness, in-service
time and corrosion rate of crude oil tank are main inuence factors
of POF. The start-runtime, in-service time and corrosion rate for
most of crude oil tanks in oil depot are different, so the calculated
POF and risk levels for 38 crude oil tanks are different. The POFs and
risks of all crude oil tanks in this paper are the POFs and risks in
June 2010.
The POF ranking of tank bottom for all crude oil tanks is showed
in Fig. 4. The POFs of tank bottom for 19 uninspected tanks are
higher than that of the inspected tanks. The POF for bottom plate of
Tank 16 is the highest in all tanks, and reaches up to 20.8  103.
The in-service time of Tank 16 has reached 13 years, which is longer
than inspection interval requirement of 10 years specied by code
SY/T 5921 in China. While, the in-service time of Tank 19, 20, 21 and
22 is 11 years, and the remaining uninspected tanks are 10 years. In
all inspected tanks, the POFs of bottom plate for Tank 4, 11, 2, 7, 9, 13,
18 and 32 are ranged from 1.3  103 to 6.5  103. Because of
relatively high corrosion rate or long in-service time, the probability of leakage for those tanks is relatively high. Due to low
corrosion rate and repair work taken in recent years, the POFs for
the others tanks are less than 9  104.
The POF ranking of tank shell in Fig. 5 is basically similar with
that of tank bottom. Due to long in-service time and uncertainty
in deterioration rate, the predicted POFs for tank shell of uninspected tanks are higher than that of inspected tanks. The POFs
for Tank 19e22 are 5.1 104; Tank 23e31, 33 and 34 are
2.1 104; the most of other tanks are 3.59  105. Compared
with the POFs of tank bottom in Fig. 4, POFs of tank shell are
much smaller.
Risk ranking for tank bottom and shell are shown in Figs. 6 and 7,
respectively. As can be seen from Fig. 6, the risks of 19 uninspected
tanks are higher than that of all inspected tanks. The primary
reasons for that are: rstly, for uninspected tanks, it is impossible to
know damage or corrosion state of crude oil tank before inspection.
So the risk of uninspected tank has a large uncertainty. Secondly,
those tanks have been serving for 10e13 years, which also result in
a high risk. The risks of bottom plate for Tank 36, 37, 38 and 16 are
almost the same, and reach up to 1.17  104. But the risk source for
those 4 tanks are different, the COFs of bottom plate for Tank 36, 37
and 38 are higher than Tank 16. Compared with the risk of tank
bottom, the risk of tank shell is much smaller, and almost negligible, so the risk of crude oil tank is determined mainly by the risk
of tank bottom.

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

169

Table 2
Basic information of crude oil tanks.
Tank no.

Last inspection
interval (years)

Capacity
(1  104 m3)

Tank
no.

Last inspection
interval (years)

Capacity
(1  104 m3)

Tank
no.

Last inspection
interval (years)

Capacity
(1  104 m3)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

11
15
10/8
15
16
6/12
9
6 (No data)
8
10
11
9
9

5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5

14
15
16
17
18
18
20
21
22
23
24
25
26

12
13
/
10
11
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/

5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5

27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38

/
/
/
/
/
5
/
/
7
/
/
/

5
5
5
5
5
5
5
5
10
10
10
10

Note: / indicate that tank hasnt been inspected.

According to the INTII requirement in code SY/T 5921 and risk

ranking above, uninspected tanks should be immediately inspected
to identify the tank corrosion state and reduces risk uncertainty; in
particular, Tank 36, 37, 38 and 16 should take priority for inspection.
Fig. 8 presents Pareto analysis for the risk distribution of all
tanks. The sum of risks for tank bottom of 19 uninspected tanks,
which is 25.68% of all equipment items (not include Tank 8),
account for 91.2% of the total risk of the oil depot. In other word,
most of risks in oil depot concentrate on tank bottom of 19

uninspected tanks. If we pay attention to 25.68%equipment items,

the 91.2% risk can effectively be controlled, which can greatly
optimize the inspection resources and increase economic efciency
of crude oil depot.
4. INTII predictions of crude oil tank
Internal inspection is one of the main means to keep the
integrity of crude oil tanks, which require tank must be out of

Table 3
Risk assessment results of crude oil tanks.
Tank no.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
18
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38

Tank bottom

Tank shell

Probability
category (Pf)

Consequence
category

Risk
category

Probability
category (Pf)

Consequence
category

Risk
category

1
2
2
3
2
1
2
2
2
2
1
2
2
1
3
1
2
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
3
2
3
3
1
3
3
3

C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
D
D
D
D

Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium high
Medium high
Medium high

/
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
/
1
1
1
2
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
2
1
2
2
1
1
1
1

C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C
C

/
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
/
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium
Medium

170

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

Fig. 3. The result of risk matrix for all crude oil tanks.

service to clear gas and oil for inspection and repair work. By the
internal inspection, the real deterioration rate of crude oil tank can
be determined, and following repair works also can ensure longtime safe operation of tanks in the future. As showed in Fig. 9,
corrosion rates of tank bottom for all crude oil tanks are higher than
that of tank shell except Tank 6. Due to lower corrosion rate and
thicker thickness of tank shell, the tank shells are eroded more
slightly than that of tank bottom. By the POF and risk calculation for
many tanks, Guo et al. (2010) and Yuan, Xu, Wang and Li (2009)
draw a conclusion that the POF and risk of tank bottom are much
larger than that of tank shell. Figs. 4e7 also present the consistent
conclusion with Guo et al. (2010) and Yuan et al. (2009). Therefore,
the INTII of crude oil tank depends on INTII of tank bottom. Due to
lack of corrosion information about uninspected tanks, the INTIIs of
uninspected tanks are not predicted in this paper.
4.1. INTII prediction based on RBI
In this method, the INTII is dened as the in-service time from
last inspection until the risk of tank bottom reach the acceptable
risk of oil depot. The procedure in Fig. 10 is used to predict INTII
based on RBI technology. 1.42E04, 3.54E04 and 7.08E04 are
respectively taken as the acceptable risk to predict INTII, which
correspond to damage factor Df(t) 100, 250 and 500 for tanks
with capacity of 50 000 m3. The damage factor Df(t) 100 is transition value from Medium Risk to Medium High Risk in risk matrix.

Fig. 4. POF ranking of tank bottom for all crude oil tanks.

The predicted INTIIs of crude oil tanks are showed in Table 4.

When the acceptable risk is 1.42E04, INTIIs for all tanks are higher
than 5e7 years specied by code SY/T 5921 except Tank 3 with that
of 6.4 years. The INTII of Tank 1, 5, 6, 12, 15, 17 and 35 are larger than
15 years; especially Tank 1 is 70 years. The corrosion rates of all
these 7 tanks are smaller than 0.3 mm/a. After in-service time of 11
years, maximum corrosion depth of Tank 1 is only 1 mm. The
inspection data of Tank 3 show that: intensive corrosion pitting was
found on the part of bottom plates of Tank 3; there are 20 bottom
plates with serious corrosion, in which the maximum corrosion
depths of 12 bottom plates are larger than 4 mm; the maximum
corrosion depth for all bottom plates is 7.4 mm.
The predicted INTIIs of tanks gradually increase with the
increasing of acceptable risk level. When the acceptable risk is
3.54E04, in addition to INTIIs of Tank 3 and Tank 11 are 8.1 and
10.8 years respectively, the others are larger than 12 years. If the
acceptable risk of oil depot reaches to 7.08E04, predicted INTIIs of
all tanks are larger than the requirements specied by code SY/T
5921, in which that of Tank 3 is 9.7 years, and the others are larger
than 12 years. Therefore, the reasonable acceptable risk is of the
utmost importance to accurately predict INTIIs of crude oil tanks.
4.2. The determination of the acceptable risk of oil depot
The acceptable risk is one of main factors which affect prediction result of INTII based on RBI technology. If the acceptable risk is

Fig. 5. POF ranking of tank shell for all crude oil tanks.

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

171

Fig. 6. Risk ranking of tank bottom for all crude oil tanks.
Fig. 8. Pareto analysis for the risk distribution of all tanks.

too high, it allow crude oil tanks to continue operation under the
condition of high risk, which may cause the leakage of tank; if the
acceptable risk is too low, it decrease the inspection interval of tank,
which increase the inspection cost and business interruption loss.
Therefore, the basic principle on the determination of the acceptable risk for oil depot is: on the premise of ensuring safe operation
of crude oil tanks, as far as possible to extend the inspection
interval.
When minimum remaining thickness of tank bottom is less than
the minimum acceptable bottom thicknesses, the tank bottom
should be repaired or replaced. So the risk at the time when the
thickness of tank bottom is eroded to the minimum acceptable
bottom thickness is considered as the Maximum Acceptable Risk
(MAR) of tank. In standard API 653 (American Petroleum Institute,
2009), if tank bottom/foundation are designed with means or no
means for detection and containment of a bottom leak, the
minimum acceptable bottom thicknesses at next inspection are
0.05 (1.27 mm) or 0.1 in (2.54 mm), respectively. The minimum
acceptable thickness of 2.54 mm is selected in this paper. When the
minimum remaining thickness of tank bottom is 2.54 mm, The
MARs assessed by API RBI and INTIIs predicted by corrosion rate
procedure of all tanks are showed in Table 5.
It can be seen from Table 5 that the INTIIs for all tanks are higher
than 5e7 years specied by code SY/T 5921. The INTII of Tank 3 is
9.71 years, while the others are higher than 11 years. The INTIIs for
Tank 1, 2, 3 and 35 are slightly higher than that obtained by RBI
method at acceptable risk of 7.08E04 in Table 4; the remaining
tanks are higher than that of RBI method with the acceptable risk of

Fig. 7. Risk ranking of tank shell for all crude oil tanks.

3.54E04, but lower when the acceptable risk is 7.08E04. Table 5

also shows that the MARs for all tanks are higher than 3.54E04, in
which Tank 4, 5, 6, 11 and 12 are close to 3.54E04. The determination of the acceptable risk for crude oil tank should not be
allowed to deteriorate to a point where the minimum acceptable
thickness or tness-for-service could be threatened. In order to
ensure safe operation of all tanks, an identical acceptable risk for
the whole oil depot should be lower than the minimum value in
MARs of all tanks. Therefore, the acceptable risk of the oil depot
cannot be higher than 3.54E04.
Mai, Zhang, and Li (2011) took the damage factor Df(t) 300 as
the target damage factor for large-scale atmospheric storage tanks.
The damage factor Df(t) 300 correspond to risk value of 4.25E04
for crude oil tanks in this paper, which is larger than 3.54E04.
Based on the comprehensive comparison analysis above and
inspection experience, it is reasonable to take risk of 3.54E04 as
the acceptable risk of the whole oil depot.

4.3. Comparison between RBI and Gumbel method

According to corrosion characteristics of crude oil storage tank,
corrosion defects can be categorized into general corrosion, local
corrosion and pit corrosion. The primary factors affecting service
life of crude oil tank are local corrosion and pit corrosion. Much
research (Cao, 1988; Liang, Zhuang, & Jiang, 2000) have shown that
the maximum corrosion depths obeys the extreme value distribution of Gumbel type I e maximum extreme value distribution

Fig. 9. The corrosion rate comparisons between tank shell and bottom.

172

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

Fig. 10. Flow chart of INTII prediction.

(MEVD), its distribution function and probability density function

as shown below




xk
Fx R exp  exp 

(3)

f x




 
xk
xk
 exp 
exp 

(4)

Nf

Table 4
INTIIs predicted by API RBI for crude oil tanks.
Tank no.

The acceptable risk

1.42E04

3.54E04

7.08E04

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
17
18
32
35

70.06
12.26
6.40
8.80
15.68
37.57
9.46
13.07
13.10
8.55
34.13
14.50
8.77
15.26
23.55
9.99
12.51
16.74

87.99
15.56
8.12
11.17
19.90
47.68
12.01
16.59
16.63
10.85
43.32
18.40
11.13
19.37
29.88
12.68
15.88
21.53

104.28
18.55
9.69
13.32
23.73
56.86
14.32
19.79
19.83
12.94
51.66
21.94
13.27
23.10
35.64
15.12
18.93
25.74

Note: the dimension of INTII is year.

where x is the random variable of maximum corrosion depth, k is

the location parameter and h is the scale parameter.
In Gumbel method, the INTII is dened as the in-service life
from last inspection or initial service time until the thickness of
bottom plate is eroded to minimum acceptable bottom thicknesses
of 2.54 mm specied by API 653. The calculation formula of the
inspection interval prediction for large-scale crude oil storage tank
is showed as following

D


yx 1  Cx 0:7797 lnln Ra 0:4501

(5)

where Nf is predicted inspection interval, years; D is corrosion

allowance, mm; yx is corrosion rate, mm/a; Cx is the coefcient of
variation for corrosion depth, mm; Ra is reliability, which is 0.999 in
this paper.
Fig. 11 presents the INTIIs comparison between Gumbel and RBI
method with the acceptable risk of 3.54E04. For Tank 2, 6, 15 and
Table 5
Predicted INTIIs and MARs with bottom plate thickness of 2.54 mm.
Tank no.

INTIIs
(years)

MARs

Tank no.

INTII
(years)

MAR

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
10

105.16
18.64
9.71
11.44
20.84
49.66
13.21
18.67
18.44

7.33E04
7.20E04
7.13E04
3.86E04
4.24E04
4.15E04
5.13E04
5.62E04
5.28E04

11
12
13
14
15
17
18
32
35

11.04
43.56
20.33
12.64
21.23
34.27
14.36
18.57
30.10

3.77E04
3.61E04
5.20E04
5.86E04
5.06E04
6.08E04
5.78E04
6.57E04
1.31E05

J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

173

Table 6
Suggested INTIIs of crude oil tanks.

Fig. 11. INTIIs comparison between Gumbel method and RBI method.

35, the INTIIs predicted by the Gumbel method are higher than by
RBI method; it is quite the contrary with that of the others tanks.
There are two reasons for that: the rst is the difference between
the measured maximum corrosion rate and the maximum corrosion rate predicted by Gumbel MEVD; the second is the difference
caused by the principle of two prediction methods.
Fig. 12 shows the comparison between predicted corrosion rate
and measured corrosion rate. It can be seen that the corrosion rates
of all tanks predicted by Gumbel MEVD are higher than the
measured corrosion rate except Tank 2, 6, and 15. Due to relatively
low corrosion rate of Tank 2, 6 and 15, the inspection intervals
predicted by two methods are both higher than 15 years. However,
in this paper more attention is paid to crude oil tanks with short
inspection interval. The inspection interval of Tank 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 14
and 18 predicted by Gumbel method is lower than 10 years, and the
corresponding ratios between predicted corrosion rate and
measured corrosion rate are 1.64, 1.31, 1.71, 2.36, 2.67, 1.44 and 2.10,
respectively. The predicted corrosion rates of Tank 3, 11 and 18 are
higher than the others, and up to 1.52 mm/a, 1.22 mm/a and
1.05 mm/a, respectively. Therefore, by the comparison of two
methods, it can be drawn that Gumbel method is more conservative than RBI method for tanks with short INTII. RBI method is
recommended to predict the INTII of tank.

4.4. The determination of the INTII for crude oil tanks

In practice, we cant manage crude oil tanks completely in
accordance with the prediction result of INTII in Table 4. A tank

Fig. 12. The comparisons between predicted corrosion rate and measured corrosion
rate.

Tank no.

Internal inspection
interval (years)

Tank
no.

Internal inspection
interval (years)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
9
10

20
12.5
6.5
8.9
15.9
20
9.6
13.2
13.3

11
12
13
14
15
17
18
32
35

8.7
20
14.7
8.9
15.5
20
10.1
12.7
17.2

might be loaded in crude oil from different area or with different

corrosivity in the future, which result in the alteration of corrosion
rate for tank bottom. For example, the predicted INTIIs of Tank 1, 6
and 12 are higher than 40 years. It is impossible to keep tanks
serving without internal inspection for such a long time. In standard API 653 also have a provision for INTII: the maximum intervals
shall not exceed 25 years for RBI assessment procedures. Because
corrosion rate is not constant over time, and the magnitude of local
corrosion rate and pit corrosion rate has certain randomness, the
determination of INTII for crude oil tanks should be based on
conservative assumptions, and contain adequate margins to allow
for uncertainties.
Based on the operation and inspection experience and standard
requirements, safety factor of 0.8 is applied on the INTII prediction
of crude oil tanks. After the correction by the safety factor of 0.8, if
the INTII of crude oil tanks is still higher than 20 years, it will be set
as 20 years. The suggested INTIIs of 18 inspected tanks are showed
in Table 6.
5. Discussions
Different countries or industry associations have different
requirements on INTII. In China, the code SY/T 5921 has provisions
for INTII: for crude oil tank it is generally 5e7 years; the maximum
of initial inspection interval for the new tank cannot exceed 10
years.
In United States, in standard API 653 (American Petroleum
Institute, 2009) the INTII is required as following: The interval
from initial service until the initial internal inspection shall not
exceed 10 years. When the tank has one of following conditions:
bottom thickness 5/16 inch or greater, cathodic protection or lining,
initial INTII shall be extended to 12e15 years. The interval between
subsequent internal inspections shall be determined in accordance
with either the corrosion rate procedures or the RBI procedures. For
using corrosion rate and RBI assessment procedures, maximum
intervals shall not exceed 20 and 25 years, respectively; for using
RBI assessment procedures and tank with a release prevention
barrier, maximum intervals shall not exceed 30 years.
In Europe, the standard EEMUA 159 (The Engineering
Equipment and Material Users Association, 2003a, 2003b) also
have specic requirement: For crude oil tank under warm and
humid climate (e.g. tropical and subtropical areas) or temperate
climate with frequent rain and wind, INTII is suggested to be 8
years; for warm and dry climate (e.g. desert locations), INTII is
suggested to be 10 years.
By the comparison of three standards, it can be concluded that
the INTII of 5e7 years in standard SY/T 5921 in China is more
conservative than that in standard API 653 and EEMUA 159, and
also more conservative than the predicted INTIIs above. Based on
statistical analysis of corrosion data and inspection interval
prediction for a lot of tanks, Shuai and Han (2010) and Shuai, Xu,

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J. Shuai et al. / Journal of Loss Prevention in the Process Industries 25 (2012) 166e175

and Han (in press) argue that the inspection interval of 5e7 years in
SY/T 5921 should be extended to 8e10 years. In Table 4, INTIIs of all
tanks predicted by RBI method with the acceptable risk of
3.54E04 are higher than 8 years. Therefore, the predicted INTIIs
above correspond with Shuais research results.
However, the Periodic Internal Inspection Method has a number
of disadvantages for the management of crude oil tanks:
1) The tanks without severe corrosion defects are open to inspect,
which will cause unnecessary expenditure in inspection and
business interruption loss, e.g. Tank 1, 6, 12 and 17.
2) Some tanks with high deterioration rate are not timely
inspected and repaired, which will lead to potential safety
hazard or in some cases may cause leakage accident of tank.
3) Periodic Internal Inspection Method not only does not consider
the effect of COF on the risk of tanks, but also does not consider
inuence of the plants management system on the integrity of
crude oil tanks. A good plants management can reduce the POF
of tank.
4) It lacks the freedom to benet from good operating experience
and focus nite inspection resources on the areas of the
greatest concern (Wintle & Kenzie, 2001).
RBI is a method which use risk as a basis to prioritize and manage
inspection. RBI shift from passive inspection to active inspection.
Different crude oil tanks have different inspection intervals, which
can be exibly determined by the risk of tank. RBI technology not
only quantitatively assesses the risk of storage tank and improves
risk level of oil depot by paying attention to high-risk tanks, but also
can predict inspection interval of crude oil tank. However, in the
consequence analysis of atmospheric storage tank, API RBI only
considers the inuence of leak on storage tank risk, but does not
consider the inuence of ammable and explosive consequences.
Although the possibility of failure of re and explosion for crude oil
tanks are very small, it may cause catastrophic accident.
As we mention above, crude oil tank might be loaded in crude
oil from different area or with different corrosivity, so the corrosion
rate of crude oil tank is not constant over the interval between two
internal inspections. The corrosion rate calculated from the difference of thickness between two inspections is the average corrosion
rate. So the short-term corrosion rate (actual corrosion rate) is
signicantly different from the long-term corrosion rate (average
corrosion rate). However, it is difcult to measure the actual
corrosion rate of tank without opening tank. In addition, corrosion
rate of pitting for tank bottom has randomness. The determination
of corrosion rate of pitting is not the research scope of this paper. In
this paper we just focus on the general corrosion in prediction of
INTII for crude oil tank. Therefore, we assume that general corrosion is the dominant damage mechanism and corrosion rate is
constant over the interval between two internal inspections in all
crude oil tanks.
The determination of reasonable INTII for crude oil tank has
a great signicance in balancing the safe operation requirement
of crude oil tanks and inspection costs. However, now it is
difcult to conrm that 3.54E04 are the most reasonable
acceptable risk for oil depot. Because there are still 19 uninspected tanks with the uncertainty on corrosion rate, and the
determination of the acceptable risk of 3.54E04 is based on
corrosion data of 18 inspected tanks. RBI risk assessment is
a continuous improvement and dynamic process. After several
years, all tanks will have at least one internal inspection, and
then we can obtain more information and have a better
understanding of deterioration rate for all crude oil tanks. The
nit is possible for us to determine the acceptable risk for the
whole oil depot. But the acceptable risk of 3.54E04 is also

reasonable for 18 inspected crude oil tanks. Therefore, determining the acceptable risk for the oil depot and considering the
inuence of re and explosion on risk assessment and INTII
prediction of crude oil tank will be our next work.
6. Conclusions
(1) The risk of tank shell is much smaller than the risk of tank
bottom for all crude oil tanks in an oil depot in China. So the
risk of crude oil tank is determined dominantly by the risk of
tank bottom. 25% Equipment items account for 90% of the total
risk in crude oil depot.
(2) According to risk assessment and risk ranking of 19 uninspected tanks and the requirement of INTII in code SY/T 5921 in
China, they should be immediately inspected to determine the
corrosion state of tanks and reduces risk uncertainty, in
particular, Tank 36, 37, 38 and 16 should take priority for
inspection.
(3) In RBI method, the predicted INTII of crude oil tank gradually
increases with the increasing of the acceptable risk. Based on
comparison analysis among calculated MARs of 18 inspected
tanks, the acceptable risk proposed by Mai and inspection
experience, 3.54E04 are taken as the acceptable risk. The
safety factor of 0.8 is used to adjust the INTIIs of 18 inspected
crude oil tanks.
(4) The INTIIs predicted by Gumbel method are more conservative
than RBI methods for tanks with short INTII.
(5) By the comparison of three standards in inspection interval, it
can be concluded that the INTII requirement of 5e7 years in
code SY/T 5921 in china is more conservative than that of
standard API 653 and EEMUA 159.
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