Event
- Event ID
- 321
- Quality
- Description
- An employee used a small industrial vacuum cleaner on an unnamed process. During this process, hydrogen gas built up from a reaction between sulphuric acid and aluminium swarf. When the vacuum cleaner unit was switched on, the motor supplied the ignition source and the gas exploded in a series of smaller explosions followed by a larger one.
- Event Initiating system
- Classification of the physical effects
- Hydrogen Release and Ignition
- Nature of the consequences
- Macro-region
- Europe
- Country
- United Kingdom
- Date
- Main component involved?
- Chemical Storage Tank
- How was it involved?
- Internal Explosion (H2-Air Mixture)
- Initiating cause
- Accidental Hydrogen Formation
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- INITIATING CAUSE
An accidental generation of hydrogen from the reaction of aluminium with sulphuric acid.
ROOT CAUSE
lack of risk assessment of a process aiming at warning/detecting this type of hazard
Facility
- Application
- Chemical Industry
- Sub-application
- Industrial cleaner
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- Industrial vacuum cleaner
- Location type
- Unknown
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2 100%
- Presumed ignition source
- Electricity
- Deflagration
- N
- High pressure explosion
- N
- High voltage explosion
- N
References
- Reference & weblink
Event description provided by HSE, original source confidential
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- HSE
