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
- Main component involved?
- Reactor / Oven / Furnace / Test Chamber
- How was it involved?
- Internal Explosion (H2-O2 Mixture)
- Initiating cause
- Run-Away Reaction
- Root causes
- Root CAUSE analysis
- The INITATING CAUSE was the violen reaction of hot metalling slag wih 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, witha CONTRIBUTING FACTOR coming from unexpcted (possibly out of specification) environemtnal conditions, due to heavy reain.
Facility
- Application
- Steel And Metals Industry
- Sub-application
- steel production
- Hydrogen supply chain stage
- All components affected
- chromatographer, compressed hydrogen storage
- Location type
- Confined
- Location description
- Industrial Area
- Operational condition
- Pre-event occurrences
- Incident occurred when cleaning the furnace.
Emergency & Consequences
- Number of injured persons
- 0
- Number of fatalities
- 0
- Post-event summary
- As a result more than 100 houses were hit by slag debris, and the explosion also caused several fires.
Event Nature
- Release type
- gas mixture
- Involved substances (% vol)
- H2,
O2 - Actual pressure (MPa)
- n.a.
- Design pressure (MPa)
- n.a.
- Presumed ignition source
- Not reported
References
- Reference & weblink
source lost
JRC assessment
- Sources categories
- Unknown
