Major Fire at Pharma Plant

Thanks to Abhay Gujar for sending information about a major fire at a Pharma plant in Punjab. Three people including a General manager and chemist have reportedly died. Did a blast in a reactor cause it? One of the articles mentions that a reactor burst due to "oversteaming".
Unfortunately, such accidents keep occurring in India and other countries also. Batch reactors must be treated with great respect. A solid looking reactor will destroy itself to pieces if it is overpressurised beyond its design limits due to maloperation.
Read the articles in these links:
Link 1
Link 2

Plant explosion kills two - pay heed to your process near misses and incidents

A news article mentions that two workers were killed and two others were seriously injured in an explosion and fire at a West Virginia chemical plant on Thursday afternoon. The explosion occurred at a plant that reprocesses highly flammable potassium titanium fluoride salts, zirconium, and other chemicals for use in the aluminum industry. The article mentions that "It is the fourth fire in the last five years and the second fatal fire since 2006. The AL Solutions plant has been the site of multiple fires since it opened in 1991, then under Jamegy Inc. In 1995, a propane tank exploded, killing one worker and injuring another. Another fire broke out in 1997. On July 18, 2006, a worker was killed when a similar explosion and fire ripped through the foundry of the facility. On December 21, 2006, another blaze broke out after a forklift malfunctioned, setting ablaze a tank filled with titanium. On August 2, 2009, yet another fire erupted as employees were shoveling zirconium into barrels".
Pay heed to your previous incidents and learn lessons from them. Even if you have excellent management systems for process safety, there is no use if the your organisation does not incorporate the learning's of past incidents in its DNA.
Read the article in this link.

Potassium cyanide incident

An incident has occurred where about 200 L of potassium cyanide has leaked into a vessel containing acids which has liberated the highly toxic hydrogen cyanide gas. Many pesticide manufacturing companies also use cyanide for their process and the handling and storage should be done with great care. I had observed a case where rainwater had entered a strongroom storing cyanide and reacted with it. The rain water entered the locked room through a drain which was open to the outside. Manage your toxic chemicals safely or they will manage you. Read the full article in this link.

7 injured in pesticide plant explosion

A news article mentions about an explosion in a pesticide plant in China. It appears to be an explosion in a solvent storage tank. Storage tanks are often not given the importance they deserve. For one thing, they are located away from the plant and the further away from the plant, the more likely it is going to receive less attention. It is a good practice to conduct surprise audits of your storage locations to check any deviations from the safety systems provided.
Read the article ( it has got pictures in page 2 and 3 also) in this link.

Did inferior raw materials cause the cordite factory blast?

A newspaper article reports that insiders of the Cordite factory believe that supply of poor quality material could be to blame for the blast that killed 5 workers on November 25. I have observed that the trend in the industry is to go for the lowest cost (L1). While process safety does not prohibit you from going for the least cost supplier, ensure that you do not create process safety problems due to inferior quality. Read the article in this link.