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
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The furnace had apparently not been evacuated completely of gaseous hydrogen, and this may have triggered the explosion.
Facility
- Application
- Electronics And Micro-Electronics
- Sub-application
- brazing furnace
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- brazing furnace, cover
- Location type
- Unknown
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- During welding works
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 1
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- 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.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Welding
References
- Reference & weblink
U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety & Health Administration OHSA, Inspection: 125571786, <br />
https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/establishment.inspection_detail?id=125571…, (accessed November 2020)
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- OHSA
