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May 25, 2024

Storage of flammable and toxic chemicals - think about this

Continuing my previous post regarding effects of explosions, when you have large storages of flammable /toxic chemicals and are expanding your storage capacity, take into account if some thing can happen in your neighboring plant that can have fragments hitting your tanks. Here is an incident from osha.gov:

On May 27, 1994, Employees #1 through #3 were working at the XXX Chemical Plant in Belpre, OH. A catastrophic failure of a 15,000 gallon polymer reactor vessel was initiated by a runaway chemical reaction involving an abnormally high amount of 1,3-butadiene during the production of a polymer. The reactor failure and ensuing fire resulted in the complete destruction of the polymerization unit. Missile fragments from the failed reactor vessel damaged adjacent units in the plant. One fragment punctured a styrene storage tank approximately 600 ft away. This subsequently resulted in the burning of five styrene storage tanks containing approximately 3.5 million gallons of flammable products. Employees #1 through #3 were killed in the explosion

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