A fire broke out in a gelatine and glue manufacturing plant. At around 5 am, a surveillance company officer had gone on-site to switch off the administrative building’s anti-intrusion alarm. He noticed flames on the roof of the Hot-Melt workshop and immediately alerted the shift manager. The installation concerned mainly consisted of a 50 m³ tank and double-lined pipes, a transfer pump, a set of electro-pneumatic valves and a mass flowmeter. Five members of the first aid team contained the fire using a first aid hose system until the fire-fighters arrived. As a safety precaution, all of the staff members were evacuated.

After dismantling and inspecting the installation, the cause of the fire was established: hydrogenated polycyclopentadiene resin had leaked from the flange joint downstream of the electro-pneumatic valve. Some of the product had accumulated in the and mass flowmeter pipe lagging. In addition, the electric heat tracer had failed (tracer short circuit or failure of its regulator).

There was only material damage in a 3 m area around the mass flowmeter, with no damage to the building’s structure. The following corrective actions were implemented to remedy this incident: the electric heat tracer was replaced by a thermal fluid tracer, thereby avoiding the risk of short circuit, the PTFE joint was replaced with a graphite joint, and identical flanges on the site were inspected in order to replace the PTFE joints. All of these actions were carried out before the installation was restarted at around 6 am. In addition, in order to remedy the failure to inform the inspection authorities for classified facilities, the safety procedure regarding incidents and accidents was amended.