Before 8:00 a.m. one morning, a leak occurred on a non-return valve at a refinery's flue-gas desulphurisation unit. At 8:13 a.m. a hydrogen sulphide (H2S – a flammable, toxic and odorous gas in very low concentrations) detection alarm with a threshold[...]
The summary of this accident has not yet been translated. In the meantime, please refer to the French summary : Vers 7h20, une explosion de poussière survient au niveau d'un élévateur d'un silo portuaire, après chargement de pellets de bois[...]
A 60-m-high wind turbine snapped in two in the early morning during a storm. The upper 55 m of the turbine fell to the ground, scattering debris over a fairly large area and driving the rotor into the ground. Firefighters set[...]
Runaway reactions are a major source of industrial accidents. They can occur in a wide array of sectors, including chemicals, petrochemicals, food processing, plastics and rubber manufacturing, and metalworking and are primarily caused by a loss of process control. The[...]
At 9:20 a.m., the temperature inside a 4000-l reactor used to manufacture an organomagnesium compound at a chemical plant abruptly rose. At 9:30 a.m., the employees in the shop began flooding the reaction medium with water. As a precaution, the internal emergency[...]
The ARIA database on technological accidents lists 26,271 events in French industrial establishments between 1 January 1992 and 31 December 2016. This large sample allows to give some trends on the exposure of the territories (regions, county) to the industrial[...]
At around 3○a.m., a deep-seated fire broke out in an outdoor 50,000○m3 woodchip storage in a waste recycling facility (24○m high, located on the facility's property line). White smoke was emitted above the urban zone and the highway. Access to[...]
A computer attack on an industrial control system (SCI) can cause an accident or a degraded operating mode in a factory. This document, with pedagogical vocation, illustrates through examples extracted from the ARIA database some cases that could lead to[...]
At around 9:00 p.m., phosgene and chlorobenzene began leaking inside the containment of a chlorinated chemicals plant. The leak was detected by analysers inside the containment. The analysers' control system automatically directed the air inside the bubble towards the caustic scrubber.[...]
In early March 2017, the ARIA database identified 349 events involving fittings and seals/gaskets. These elements are often encountered on pipe flanges and are also essential sealing components for valves or other equipment. Insufficiently tightened flange bolts and deficient leak[...]
