A detonation occurred during the preparation of munitions destruction furnaces by a specialised firm at a military installation. These operations, performed by a team of 5 professionals, consisted of preparing holes and filling them with munitions intended for destruction. A technician[...]
In an automobile paint plant, a technician left his workstation at 4:15 pm in forgetting to turn off the pump used to transfer paint containing 55% acrylic resin, 15% xylene, 16% butyl acetate and 4% ethylbenzene. The transfer of resin[...]
At 10:30 pm in a fine chemistry plant, a reactor underwent a pressure rise during chlorination of alcohol using thionyl chloride (SOCl2). This slightly exothermic reaction took place in a solvent medium (1,2 dichloroethane, or DCE) and under a slight[...]
An explosion and fire occurred at night inside a workshop dedicated to toluene di-amine (TDA) synthesis by means of hydrogenating dinitrotoluene (DNT) in the presence of Raney nickel; the workshop had been taken offline for scheduled maintenance. Internal fire-fighters had[...]
At a 40-ha chemical facility located on the outskirts of an urban area, the safety disc set at 1.5 bar on a 15.2-m3 reactor burst in a plant working with formo-phenolic resins used for glues applied to agglomerated material. The[...]
At a chemical plant, leak occurred at 5.20 pm while a tank car containing 48 tonnes of ammonia (NH3) was being unloaded. Twenty-seven tonnes of NH3 were released over 37 minutes until the operator closed the tank's bottom valve by[...]
In a fertilizer production plant, an ammonia leak injured 3 workers, one of whom died. On December 1st, 1994, the weekly cleaning of the dryer was scheduled. The tubular reactor of this dryer was shut off at 6:25 am then[...]
In a fine chemistry unit, the temperature of a reactor abnormally surged (tripping the alarm) during the casting of an aldehyde-phenol compound into a mix of hydrogen peroxide, maleic anhydride, methylene chloride and dimethylformamide. The technician shut down the metering[...]
A reaction between cyanuric chloride and sulphanilic acid ran away inside a fine chemistry unit. Water, sulphanilic acid and cyanuric chloride were loaded into an 8,000-litre reactor. According to the new operating protocol, 1 tonne of ice was supposed to[...]
In a bituminous materials depot run by the BTP company and comprising 17 tanks, one of which contained hydrochloric acid, the vapour space of a vertical container filled to half its "cut-back 0/1" capacity (i.e. 18 tonnes of liquefied bitumen[...]
