If you follow the CSB investigations, you may remember an incident from years ago where a fire impacted a pipe rack and the supports that were treated for fire resistance withstood the fire and the ones not treated/protected failed, causing the collapse of the structure leading to a much larger fire which then impaled three (3) 1-ton Chlorine cylinders, one of which ultimately failed due to the jet fire. So are pipe supports associated with flammable liquid piping required to be fireproof? The short answer is YES and don’t let someone tell you otherwise! Here is what we have as our safety baseline for flammable liquid piping…
PLEASE NOTE: Although I am explicitly calling out flammable liquid piping, Good Engineering Practices will use this same rationale to protect pipe supports that are in toxic service. Fire and powered vehicles are a pipe support worst nightmares, and we should have learned our lessons by now that it is ONLY A MATTER of time until one of the two makes contact with our piping and/or its supports!