Event
- Event ID
- 558
- Quality
- Description
A violent explosion occurred at a blast furnace. The explosion occurred while the blast furnace was being cleaned at the end of casting. For this purpose, worker poured the contents of a casting ladle, comprising slag and cinders, into a pit situated nearby. The pit contained more water than usual due to a considerable amount of rain in the preceding days.
The heat of the slag apparently caused dissociation of the oxygen and hydrogen of the water, and he hydrogen then exploded, sending slag flying as far as 10-20 m. As a result more than 100 houses were hit by slag debris, and the explosion also caused several fires.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- Belgium
- Date
- Component involved
- reactor / oven / furnace / test chamber
- Failure mode
- internal explosion
- Initiating cause
- run-away reaction
- Root CAUSE analysis
The INITIATING CAUSE was the reaction of hot metalling slag with the water.
The amount of rain from the preceding days and the heat of the slag triggered formation of oxygen and hydrogen.
The ROOT CAUSE could be related to a wrong operation, with a CONTRIBUTING FACTOR coming from unexpected (possibly out of specification) environmental conditions, due to heavy rain.- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2020
Facility
- Application
- Steel and metals industry
- Sub-application
- Steel metallurgy
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
chromatographer, compressed hydrogen storage
- Process temperature range [C]
- Ultra-high temperature (above 1000°C)
- Process pressure range [MPa]
- ambient pressure (around 0.1 MPa)
- Location type
- Confined
- Location
- industrial area
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
Incident occurred when cleaning the furnace.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- unknown
- Number of injured persons
- unknown
- Post-event summary
As a result more than 100 houses were hit by slag debris, and the explosion also caused several fires.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2,
O2 - Probable IGNITION SOURCE
- Explosion type
References
- Sources categories
- Unknown
- Reference & weblink
source lost
