Re: Envisat sees smoke from Europe's worst peacetime fire

In article <%Smnf.641831$xm3.317471@attbi_s21>, George wrote:
> I was thinking earlier that
> perhaps something that was supposed to be grounded, had a faulty ground,
> which may have caused an electrostatic buildup somewhere, and when fumes
> became present, for whatever reason, spark boom wallop. I've heard reports
> of this kind of thing happening before. A former employer of mine is a
> chemical engineer, and he recounted a similar incident that happened at a
> chemical plant he once worked at. In that incident, there wasn't the
> catastrophic explosion, thankfully. Unfortunately, a plant employee who
> was working in the area at the time was killed.
>
Man due to take an oil sample from a process line.
Walks up to take-off tap with steel bucket in his hand.
[misses part of procedure here]
Puts on rubber glove to protect his skin from the crude oil.
Turns on tap to fill bucket.
Oil flows from tap into bucket, putting static charge onto bucket.
Man turns off tap.
Walks off to production chemistry lab carrying sample.
Bucket touches earthed metal wall plate and sparks ; gas above oil
ignites. Man drops bucket, spilling oil.
Man raises alarm ; platform begins blowdown ; crew evacuated to TSR ;
helicopters scrambled from shore to evacuate POB ; fire team assembled ; fire
contained then extinguished. Most POB evacuated to shore pending
investigations.

Acromnyms : POB - Personnel On Board ; TSR Temporary Safe Refuge.

Missed part of procedure : attaching grounding strap of bucket to earth
point on sample tap.

True story. Piper Bravo, May 1997. Location 150m WNW of the wreckage of
Piper Alpha and the graves of 167 men.

--
Aidan Karley FGS
Aberdeen, Scotland,
Location: 57°10'11" N, 02°08'43" W (sub-tropical Aberdeen), 0.021233

.

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