The facilities regulations § 35

§ 35 Gas release system

Facilities equipped with or attached to process facilities, shall have a gas release system. The system shall prevent escalation of hazard and accident situations by quickly reducing the pressure in the equipment, and it shall be designed so that the release of gas does not harm personnel or equipment.
It shall be possible to trigger the depressurisation manually from the central control room.
Liquid separators installed in the gas release system shall be secured against overfilling.
Section last changed: 01 January 2011

The requirement regarding the gas release system as mentioned in the first subsection, entails that gases that are flammable or harmful to health shall be routed to a safe emission site, and that any potential heat load shall be calculated, cf. Section 11.
In order to fulfil the requirement regarding the gas release system as mentioned in the first subsection, the standards NS-EN ISO 13702 Chapter 7 and Appendix B.2, API Standard 521, NORSOK S-001 Chapter 12 and P-002 Chapter 21 should be used, with the following additions:
  1. Rapid depressurisation should be selected rather than passive fire protection. For fire loads, reference is made to Section 11,
  2. When designing gas release systems, external environment considerations should be safeguarded by preferably flaring flammable, toxic or corrosive gases.
In addition to manual activation as mentioned in the second subsection, activation signals may also come from relevant safety systems such as the emergency shutdown system.
In order to secure liquid separators against overfilling as mentioned in the third subsection, the production should be shut down in the event of a high liquid level.