Leakage of sulphurous gases at a refinery
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[...]
Wind turbine toppled during a storm
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, case studies, lessons learned
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[...]
Runaway reaction in a chemical plant
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[...]
Geographical distribution of industrial accidents in France
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[...]
Large-scale fire in a wood chip storage facility
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[...]
Cybersecurity and industry
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[...]
Phosgene discharges at a chemical plant
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.[...]
