Connecting an oil terminal to a chemical plant 1.5 km away, a heat-insulated pipeline pressurised at 300 mm was perforated following a period of intense cold weather; 4 m³ of benzene had solidified upon shrinking below 5°C. By 2:50 pm,[...]
Several lightning strikes were recorded in a refinery at 7:25 pm, one of which caused the expansion space to explode on a 2,000-m³ capacity buffer tank (for collection and settlement) filled with 770 m³ of process water. The hydrocarbon supernatants[...]
An empty butadiene tanker car not yet degassed was in transit at a marshalling yard. Due to the ambient cold temperature (-17°C), the gaseous phase of the butadiene liquefied (Tboiling=-4.4°C); cistern pressure was drawn down by an estimated 0.35 bar[...]
Around noon, a red sludge basin at an aluminium production site employing some 1,200 personnel broke over a 50-m length, releasing 1 million m³ of highly basic sludge; 10 people were killed and another 286 injured (due to chemical burns[...]
At 10:46 pm during a thunderstorm, an electrical outage interrupted polystyrene (PS) production at a chemical site where 27 of the 160 employees were on the job. A safety disc broke and styrene was released. The crystal manufactured polystyrene (CMP)[...]
A large fire broke out at an open used-tire storage in an industrial area, near a recycling plant that had started its operation only two months earlier. The fire expanded fast and covered the whole pile of the tires, estimated[...]
A lightning strike caused a voltage drop on the power supply of a chlorine-alkali plant using the mercury process. The emergency electrical system was activated, though restoring the external supply voltage in less than 200 ms rendered the entire system[...]
A pharmaceutical plant on a 55 hectare platform out of which 15 hectares were used was flooded (ARIA 35427) with 20 cm to 1 m of water due to torrential rains (300 mm in a few days including over 100[...]
The sinking of a double-deck floating roof on the 70-m diameter B962 tank containing over 62,200 m³ of crude oil was detected on July 18, 2007 in a refinery. No product had been transferred from this tank since July 2,[...]
The summary of this accident has not yet been translated. In the meantime, please refer to the French summary : Une tempête appelée "Gudrun" frappe le sud de la Suède dans la nuit. Des vents à plus de 33 m/s[...]
