Hydrogen explosion in a sodium, lithium and chlorine manufacturing plant.

The incident occurred in a building containing the residues of the production of sodium, lithium and chlorine.
The alarm was given by an employee who heard detonations coming from the building. A few seconds later, the building's fire alarm went off.
Following the bursting of a container of sodium residues, a fireproof pallet was consumed without flame.
The emergency response team opened the doors of the building to evacuate the smoke and then entered the building. They stopped the burning pallet with a powder extinguisher and performed a flame search by means of a thermal camera The intervention was finished in appeoximately 5 hours.

The explosion of the container was believed to be due to the presence of moisture. The water, in contact with the sodium, formed hydrogen which exploded due to the temperature increase linked to the exothermic reaction.

According to ARIA, the causes are unknown, but the presence of humidity in the container of sodium is suspected having reacted with the metal to produce hydrogen which ignited due to unknown sources and eventually caused the explosion and the fire. The ROOT CAUSE could be linked to an inadequate operations allowing moisture to access the metal sodium container. Nevertheless, the overarching root cause was an inadequate risk assessment of the operations, with a consequent lack of effective preventing measures.

sodium, lithium and chorine manufacturing plant, container with metallic sodium

The emergency response team opened the doors of the building to evacuate the smoke and then entered the building. They stopped the burning pallet with a powder
extinguisher and performed a flame by means of a thermal camera The intervention is finished after 4 hours.