In an industrial catering facility dedicated to fish dishes employing 700 staff, a water pipe carrying an added bio-detergent product with corrosive properties was punctured and its contents spilled onto a 28-mm diameter copper pipe transporting chlorodifluoromethane (R22) under high[...]
In a pharmaceutical plant, during an operation intended to remove dimethylsulfide (an odoriferous compound), a violent explosion audible for several kilometres fractured equipment (rupture disc, manifolds...) on a tank containing a cyclohexane-rich flammable distillate, and blew windows out of a[...]
At 10:15 am during scheduled intervention on the main board at a refinery's vapour production plant, a several-second outage on the 220-V network occurred, in turn upsetting the centralised control station. The safety features on flame detection systems, supplied from[...]
An explosion followed by fire destroyed the oldest of 3 warehouses at a farm cooperative housing some 100 tonnes of phytosanitary products and 26 tonnes of sodium chlorate. About 20 people entered a state of shock. The shockwave shattered window[...]
During the paint fabrication process, a tank containing a mix of minium (red lead) and glycerophthalic resin exploded at 11 pm. The ensuing fire destroyed 2 workshops and both the research and control laboratories; 170 employees were in technical unemployment.[...]
A catering facility (handling 35 tonnes/day), in the process of obtaining administrative authorisations, ignited (due to flames or a short circuit?) around 1:10 pm at the periphery of an industrial zone. 4,000 m² were destroyed within 17 min, followed by[...]
Inside a motor factory the day after a pressure test was conducted on a double-shell tank containing hydrocarbons, pollutants spilled into the ENNS River; local fishermen made the discovery. This pollution outbreak affected 35 km of river length and 3[...]
The dike on a storage basin for pyrite mining waste broke over a 50-m length following a landslide. 4 million tonnes of acidic water plus 3 million tonnes of sludge containing Zn, Fe, Cu, Pb and As (0.3 g/l) reached[...]
On a tubular exchanger, a disc broke over ¼ of its cross-section at 4:50 am during a pressure surge in the liquid ammonia (NH3) circuit connecting medium-pressure NH3 storage cells to a urea workshop operating under stable conditions. A valve[...]
In a port zone, 28 of the 44 vertical cylindrical concrete cells of a 37,150-tonne cereal silo exploded during the transfer of corn from a lorry to the port storage facilities. The silo was nearly full, and the intermediate gates[...]
