Safety in Design

8 Examples from the Chemical Industry

8.1 Introduction

Five accidents that occurred in the chemical industry are described in Sections 8.2–8.6. The first case concerns failing of the cooling of a reactor. There was no back‐up system for the cooling. The second case, described in Section 8.3, is the loss of control of a chemical reaction because the reaction temperature had risen to too high a value. Case 3, described in Section 8.4, concerns an explosion in a reactor, approximately 20 s later followed by an explosion in a separating vessel belonging to a second parallel reactor. An unforeseen chemical reaction occurred during the warming of catalyst pellets in the reactor in which the explosion took place. In the fourth case, described in Section 8.5, instructions were not adhered to and this caused a gas explosion in a furnace of a plant during the start‐up of that furnace. The instructions were not adhered to because following the instructions was considered a roundabout and time‐consuming way of starting the furnace. The fifth case concerns the explosion of a poultry feed additive in a closed contact dryer.

8.2 Runaway Reaction at T2 Laboratories at Jacksonville, Florida in the United States in 2007

Event

A powerful explosion and subsequent fire occurred at T2 Laboratories, Inc., a chemical manufacturer at Jacksonville, Florida, on December 19, 2007 [1]. The explosion killed four employees of T2 and injured four employees of T2 and 28 members of the public, ...