Event
- Event ID
- 293
- Quality
- Description
An explosion occurred in an industrial cleaner, blowing off and shattering the cover from the top of the machine.
It is believed that the explosion was caused by accidental formation of hydrogen from the rest of previous cleaning (probably from NaOH).
One person injured.- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Date
- Component involved
- other
- Failure mode
- internal explosion
- Initiating cause
- accidental hydrogen formation
- Root causes
- Unknown
- Date entry in HIAD
- 28/02/2009
Facility
- Application
- Other
- Sub-application
- Industrial cleaner
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
Site industrial cleaner.
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location
- unknown
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
The cleaning machine was thought to have been used to remove coolant & swarf from a machine used for aluminium turning. The same machine was then used for removing wash water from another machine which was very slightly contaminated with an alkaline solution (probably the NaOH) It is thought this reacted and caused a build-up of hydrogen gas.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Number of injured persons
- 1
In-depth data
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Probable IGNITION SOURCE
- Explosion type
- Detonation
References
- Sources categories
- HSE
- Reference & weblink
Event description provided by HSE, original source confidential
