Event
- Event ID
- 673
- Quality
- Description
An employee was attempting to re-weld a lifting point on a brazing furnace cover. He was using a tungsten inert gas (TIG) welding machine to build up an attachment point on the cover when an explosion occurred. Its force lifted the furnace cover and propelled it against the employee.
There were no witnesses to the incident.
The furnace had apparently not been evacuated completely of gaseous hydrogen, and this may have triggered the explosion.- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Date
- Component involved
- reactor / oven / furnace / test chamber
- Failure mode
- internal explosion
- Initiating cause
- inadequate or no purge
- Root CAUSE analysis
The furnace had apparently not been evacuated completely of gaseous hydrogen, and this may have triggered the explosion.
- Root causes
- Date entry in HIAD
- 01/01/2020
Facility
- Application
- Electrical, electronics and micro-electronics industry
- Sub-application
- electrical components production
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
brazing furnace, cover
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location
- unknown
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
During welding works
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 1
- Post-event summary
Medium injuries.
Lesson Learnt
- Lesson Learnt
Too less is known on the specific furnace application and the accidental sequence, to deduce a lesson.
If the assumed cause is correct, a necessary step before starting any type of maintenance or repairing work is to purge the furnace with nitrogen and to verify the concentration with a detector.
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
- Explosion type
References
- Sources categories
- OHSA
- Reference & weblink
U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration OHSA, Inspection: 125571786,
https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/establishment.inspection_detail?id=125571…, (accessed November 2020)
