Overview of the Legal Design Basis for Passive Fire Protection in Korea and the Direction of Further Development

The design of passive fire protection is applied to minimize the domino effect when a liquid pool fire occurs due to the facilities inside a process plant. In general, the design of passive fire protection has been applied using the API RP 2218 guideline as the basis regardless of the country or owner of the process plant. However, in Korea, legal regulations dictate that explosive areas should be regarded as fireproofing zones rather than following the API RP 2218 guideline. Because liquid pool fires and explosive gas atmospheres are different concepts, it is wrong from an engineering perspective to regard them as the same. Therefore, when a liquid pool fire occurs in a process plant in Korea, it may be more dangerous than in any other countries. In this study, we investigated three categories of fire risk. Korean safety regulations for the design of passive fire protection and others that are not reasonable from an engineering perspective need to be studied and revised. Specifically, Korea needs to revise the design basis of passive fire protection based on the API RP 2218 guideline as a legal standard in accordance with global trends.