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April 14, 2011

Be aware of hazards of chemical cleaning

In 2009 an incident occurred during a chemical cleaning of a heat exchanger. 4 people reportedly died. Apparently, residual polymer was being removed from a heat exchanger by a chemical cleaning operation using 70% nitric acid when a chemical reaction caused pressure to build up  and blew the contents of the heat exchanger out. Chemical cleaning of heat exchangers is often done during turnarounds. Ensure that a proper hazard analysis is carried out before you embark on such a cleaning. Often, the information about hazards will be available within the company but may not be known to the personnel who are carrying out the job.
Read about the incident in this link.

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