Pollution
Humain
Environnement
Economique

At an industrial gas packaging site, fire broke out in a room housing 16 bottles of silane. The internal emergency plan was activated and the site evacuated. The blaze could not be immediately controlled and wound up destroying the room (11 million francs of damages). A VCR connection (2 ends with spherical seating faces compressing a metal joint by means of clamping a male nut with a female nut) on one of the bottles loosened after a pressure disturbance when opening the second half-frame (60 bar). Without any possibility of placing gas sources in automatic safety mode following leak detection, the flames could not be arrested and the fire spread to a hood built using combustible materials. The lack of an appropriate locking system on pipes being regularly handled or the use of a components of different brand or manufacturing implied that the connection seals could not be guaranteed in time. A clamping procedure was examined (torque, etc.).

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