Pollution
Humain
Environnement
Economique

At about 6:40 p.m., a foundry employee was filling a 3-t transfer ladle with molten iron when the bottom of the bag was pierced. The employee placed the ladle on the ground, above a pit designed to recover the melt but the forklift’s forks got stuck in the ladle’s sleeves. As the forklift moved back, the molten material spread in the workshop. The employee then decided to pour the melt into nearby ladles. He drove through the molten iron on the ground, igniting the tyres. At that point, he took the leaking ladle outside the plant and extinguished the forklift’s tyres with a fire extinguisher. In the meantime, the metal ignited 2 new big-bags and 1 dust collector. The production technicians alerted the emergency services and began fighting the fires with fire extinguishers. The flames spread to 6 cabinets on the other side of separating wall with openings down to the bottom. In one of the cabinets, the firefighters discovered a 13 kg gas cylinder that they removed. The fire was extinguished at 7:10 p.m.

The technicians emptied the damaged ladle and the melting furnace. They then scraped the melt off the ground. The Classified Facilities Inspection authorities learnt about the event in the press. In total, 14 t of liquid cast iron was lost.

The wear on the ladle was attributed to higher than usual use due to the increased number of melt transfers carried out following the breakdown of a 16-ton furnace, supplemented by 12-t furnaces. The ladle was punctured at the point where the jet of molten cast iron came into contact with the lining material first, causing rapid and significant erosion.

The operator created an emergency area to place the ladle in case of spills, closed off the lower part of the wall and moved the big bags.