Event
- Event ID
- 644
- Quality
- Description
A vapour explosion, followed by a fire, occurred at a drier in a plant making titanium sponge. When titanium containing water was put into the drier, it came to contact with the edge of the protecting tube of the inside thermometer, generating sparks which ignited the titanium sponge. The red-hot titanium sponge melted the drier to leak out, and reacted with water spilled from the fractured drier, producing hydrogen gas. This led to the vapour explosion scattering titanium, which ignited the nearby products of titanium.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- Asia
- Country
- Japan
- Date
- Component involved
- chemical storage tank
- Failure mode
- leak & ignition
- Initiating cause
- run-away reaction
- Root CAUSE analysis
The ROOT CAUSE was a fault of the whole design. Moreover, management of the operations should have realised the intrinsic hazard of the operations, and intervene.
- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2020
Facility
- Application
- Steel and metals industry
- Sub-application
- titanium production
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
titanium sponge, dryer,
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location
- industrial area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 1
- Number of injured persons
- 4
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas-solid mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2,
H2O,
titanium - Probable IGNITION SOURCE
- Explosion type
References
- Sources categories
- RISCAD
- Reference & weblink
Orignal source lost. RISCAD is closed.
