Investigators with the U.S. Chemical Safety Board say a June 2019 explosion and fire at the Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) refinery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, occurred due to a corroded pipe elbow in the refinery’s alkylation unit.

In a new study, researchers at Concordia University and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University examine many methodologies currently used by industry and academics to predict pipeline failure—and their limitations. The researchers cite more than 10,000 pipeline failures in the United States alone as the motivation for their research, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.

The greatest use of high-temperature water and steam is in electrical power generation. Historically, fossil fuels were used almost exclusively to heat water and make steam until the introduction of nuclear power steam generators in the second part of the 20th century.