Gas leak into cooling towers

In an article in the Hindu dated  August 27,2013, it quotes a top official of HPCL saying  "in fact such an accident is first of its kind in the world history. A blast of this kind in the cooling tower in unheard of”.

For those in the process industry, gas leaks into cooling towers are not a one off affair. Heat exchanger tube leaks can cause a surge of gas into cooling towers. I had experienced one such incident  30 years ago. Dr Trevor Kletz, in his book " What Went Wrong" mentions under the category "Heat Exchangers", in page 105, the following incident "A leak in another heat exchanger allowed flammable gas to enter a cooling water return line. Welding, which was being carried out on the cooling tower ignited the gas. The atmosphere in the cooling tower had been tested before work started, 5 hours earlier"

Cooling towers are often falsely thought to be harmless, but they can become killing towers in no time.


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HPCL refinery cooling tower fire incident

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Gas leak into system caused the explosion in the cooling tower in refinery?

 Read this article in the Hindu in this link.

 
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Data on process incidents lacking even in USA

I read an interesting article in Dallas News which mentions that lack of data on chemical accidents is a big issue in USA. Just imagine...if this is the state in the USA which has the Chemical Safety Board and other agencies to investigate process incidents, imagine the plight in India!
The article mentions that out of 22000 chemical units in USA just 100 are members of ACC which requires data on accidents to be made public. The article ends in this note:
“Why would a company or organization do data checking? They might do it because there is a liability risk. They might do it because they feel it’s the right thing to do,” Podgurski said in an interview. “But even in an honest organization, deadline financial pressures will mitigate those efforts.”
Read the article in this link.


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Video of cooling tower fire

Details are still sketchy but it appears that the explosion/fire occurred during charging of water to the tower. We have to wait and see whether the investigation details will be made public. Meanwhile see a video of the fire in this link. 

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