Archive for the ‘Fires and explosions’ Category
Sunday, January 16th, 2011
A month ago, I wrote about fire in a biodiesel facility - the last one for 2010.
https://risk-safety.com/risksafetynewsite/another-biodiesel-firehopfully-the-last-one-for-2010/
Four days into 2011, a fire was reported at a biodiesel plant in Indiana. A boiler used to heat oil which in turn in used to warm biodiesel caught on fire.
To read more click below:
http://tinyurl.com/BiodieselFire-Jan11
Posted in Biofuels, Fires and explosions, Incidents | No Comments »
Friday, January 14th, 2011
NTSB has issued seven safety recommendations following the September, 2010 San Bruno incident in California.
#1. To PHMSA: Inform pipeline operators about circumstances leading up-to and consequences of pipeline rupture at San Bruno and NTSB's recommendations.
#2. To PG&E: Search records to identify all the gas transmission lines (in class 3 & 4 locations, ...
Posted in Fires and explosions, Incident Investigation, Incidents, Natural Gas Pipelines, Pipelines, Process Safety, Risk Management | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 15th, 2010
Readers of this blog are familiar with the biofuel incident trend that I have written about in previous posts.
https://risk-safety.com/risksafetynewsite/category/biofuels/
Based on what I have researched, the incident frequency of a fire/explosion in biodiesel plant is 10 weeks, i.e. every two and half months there is a fire or explosion in a biodiesel ...
Posted in Biofuels, Chemical Accidents, Fires and explosions, Incidents, Process Safety | 3 Comments »
Friday, October 1st, 2010
The third edition of API 752, "Management of Hazards Associated with Permanent Buidlings" came out in late 2009 and there are a few major revisions to consider.
Building Occupancy: If a building is occupied, clearly it has to be evaluated. However, according to the new standard if a building is "intended for occupancy", it ...
Posted in Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Siting | No Comments »
Friday, September 17th, 2010
The following video desribes 2005 fire/explosion in Praxair's gas cylinder filling and distribution center. The incident occurred when gas from a pressurized propylene cylinder was released through the relif valve and got ignited.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_ZLQkn7X-k
This is one of those situation where the risk mitigation measure (i.e. relief valve) is creating a hazard.
In situations where there is demand on the relief valve, ...
Posted in Dispersion, Fires and explosions, Incident Investigation | No Comments »
Wednesday, September 15th, 2010
I recently wrote a guest post on Mettler Toledo's blog on theoretical ways to screen reactive chemicals. Here is a link:
http://tinyurl.com/screen-reactive-chemicals
Posted in Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Reactive Chemicals | 1 Comment »
Thursday, August 19th, 2010
According to the FAA, there have been 113 battery fire incidents on passenger and cargo planes between 1991-2010. There is a battery fire incident every two months in the airline industry.
Batteries as Weapons?
Airline industry is concerned that terrorists could use such batteries to create a fire by putting together ...
Posted in Battery Fires, Fires and explosions, Security | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
In a number of my previous blog posts, I have emphasized the disturbing trend of fires and explosions in the biodiesel and biofuel industry.
Based on the statistics, the biodiesel industry in the US is experiencing an incident every two-and-a-half months, i.e. approx. 10 weeks.
The last biodiesel incident I wrote about was in Dec. ...
Posted in Biofuels, Fires and explosions, Incident Investigation, Process Safety | 2 Comments »
Friday, July 9th, 2010
LNG spilled onto water sometime undergoes a rapid phase transition (RPT) or physical explosion creating localized overpressures.
Such physical explosions are also observed when water contacts molten metal or hot lava (steam explosions).
RPT is a result of near spontaneous generation of vapor as the cold LNG is vaporized from heat gained ...
Posted in Fires and explosions, LNG | No Comments »
Tuesday, June 8th, 2010
Earlier I had written about the use of RFID for tracking hazardous substances. One of the readers, Sujith, wrote to me that RFID can be a ignition source and thus pose a potential for fire/explosion.
Special attention should be paid while choosing RFIDs for applications involving flammable materials.
Here's a file that provides more details on ...
Posted in Fires and explosions, Process Safety, Technology | 1 Comment »
