At around 10:00 p.m., the fastener of a fan-motor propeller at a waste-to-energy and biodiesel production plant failed, causing the cooling system to fail in turn. The rise in pressure resulting from heating of the distillation column caused the rupture disks to burst, releasing into the atmosphere the 95 tonnes of gaseous methanol that had built up in the top of the column. The cooling system was repaired on 19 February but failed again on the same day; it was repaired for good on the following day. Production continued in degraded mode during the events.

The government requested that an assessment of the environmental and health effects of this release be made.

An analysis by the operator found multiple failures:

•  Innovative system affected by poor design choices.
•  No safety instructions in the event of failure of the cooling system.
•  Lack of supervision in the engineering of new developments.

The operator assigned additional human resources to the monitoring of industrial programmes and to the development and implementation of safety rules. It also plans to create a safe production shutdown procedure to be followed in the event of failure of the cooling system.