Accidents / Incidents / Near misses

Hi Guys,

As we all know, safety is a day to day learning process, and is best learnt by sharing. We have been so good in this forum sharing Safety related information so far.

I thought it would be good for us to share the Accidents / Incidents / Near misses experienced in their related industry and will work on Investigation through the experience of experts in this forum. This way I think we will be able to get learn, understand and mitigate such an Accidents in our environment.

To start with I thought I would start with one of the Incident that I had experienced in my work experience in one of a chemical industry.

A hydrogenator reactor was filled with solvent (Ethanol) and catalyst (through a catalyst charging pot on top of the reactor) and pressurised with hydrogen upto a pressure of 30 barg. As the hydrogenation reaction (absortion of hydrogen through the solvent) is faster in the initial stages, it took 30 min to stabilise the hydrogen pressure in the reactor. The pressure in the reactor was monitored through the DCS. Suddenly the hydrogen leaked through the catalyst pot and was ignited (hydrogen fires are invisible). immediately the hydrogen was depressurised using nitrogen and the hydrogen fire was put off by the application of fire fighting systems.

This is just a brief note on the incident, If anyone is interested to proceed with this incident or come with their own incident from their industry they can.

Let us share, investigate, understand and mitigate.

Everyone is free to share their own perspective

Regards

Sri