Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday August 31 2017, @03:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the mount-generators-on-a-barge? dept.

Residents near a chemical plant in Crosby, TX — approximately 25 miles (40km) northeast of Houston — have been evacuated due to the possibility of an explosion:

Arkema SA expects chemicals to catch fire or explode at its heavily flooded plant in Crosby, Texas in the coming days because the plant has lost power to its chemical cooling systems, a company official said on Wednesday.

The company evacuated remaining workers on Tuesday, and Harris County ordered the evacuation of residents in a 1.5-mile(2.4-km) radius of the plant that makes organic peroxides used in the production of plastic resins, polystyrene, paints and other products.

Richard Rowe, chief executive officer of Arkema's North America unit, told reporters that chemicals on the site will catch fire and explode if they are not properly cooled.

Arkema expects that to happen within the next six days as temperatures rise. He said the company has no way to prevent that because the plant is swamped by about 6 feet (1.83 m) of water due to flooding from Harvey, which came ashore in Texas last week as a powerful Category 4 hurricane.

"Materials could now explode and cause a subsequent and intense fire. The high water that exists on site, and the lack of power, leave us with no way to prevent it," Rowe said. He said he believes a fire would be "largely sustained on our site but we are trying to be conservative."

From the company's web site:

Our Crosby facility makes organic peroxides, a family of compounds that are used in everything from making pharmaceuticals to construction materials. But organic peroxides may burn if not stored and handled under the right conditions. At Crosby, we prepared for what we recognized could be a worst case scenario. We had redundant contingency plans in place. Right now, we have an unprecedented 6 feet of water at the plant. We have lost primary power and two sources of emergency backup power. As a result, we have lost critical refrigeration of the materials on site that could now explode and cause a subsequent intense fire. The high water and lack of power leave us with no way to prevent it. We have evacuated our personnel for their own safety. The federal, state and local authorities were contacted a few days ago, and we are working very closely with them to manage this matter. They have ordered the surrounding community to be evacuated, too.

Also at ABC and The Washington Post.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:29PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 31 2017, @02:29PM (#562127)

    The problem is that the chemicals are actually needed yet are intrinsically unfriendly when not kept cool.

    Which? I know of chemicals that explode when warmed but not in context directly of peroxide mfgr. Indirectly in a research lab or quant lab, maybe, maybe.

    Note that chemical plants are run very paranoid. A fellow chem student who actually completed his chem degree shut down a major expressway a couple years back when a reaction went weird. Obviously there is not a giant hole in the expressway or the metro area, but they exclude people up to the theoretical blast radius to minimize lawsuits... When I was in the army at the ammo depot we had spacings for ammo bunkers of like one KM to the nearest civilian not because 100% of civilians die at 999 meters but because theoretically that one time someone saw a piece of shell fragment land 750 meters away once, so round up to one km and call it good. Likewise for about a mile everyone was evac'd for my buddies little incident because theoretically if every barrel perfectly detonated or burned behind one manhole cover, that manhole cover at a perfect 45 degree launch angle could land a mile away, although in reality he was probably the only human being at risk. Turn on the sprinklers activate the emergency plan get everyone the F out. My buddy didn't get fired BTW, supply contamination catalysed some side reaction. Sometimes stuff just happens.

    My gut level guess is in the quant analysis lab or a research lab they have a couple ether containers in the ether fridge and they're worried a couple days of room temp could result in ether peroxides forming (which is why you keep ether cool to begin with...) and blowing an ether fridge to bits was designed not to ignite the peroxide tanks HOWEVER some engineer is paranoid the water will focus the shockwave of the ether fridge going up into cracking a production tank resulting in a rather impressive release and fire. Or they're relying on ether floating on water, normally if the ether fridge blew up or otherwise leaked burning liquid ether, it would incinerate the lab (whoopsies) but they have a nice trench and berm around the production facilities to protect them, unless of course ya got 6 feet of water for the burning ether to float over the trench and berm. The burning ether is not going to incinerate all of Houston BTW because ether is kinda volatile, much like dumping gasoline on the driveway, it'll evaporate at normal temperatures in a couple minutes-ish. But it'll be an impressive fire up close for a short amount of time.

    A third theory I have is 6 feet of water will randomly mix stuff and randomly mixing stuff at a peroxide factory is probably not recreationally safe, so they're worried a theoretical and unlikely very small fire will turn into a very large fire. A giant flood is like the 10 kilomonkeys at typewriters, there's plenty of opportunity for bottle A to smash into bottle Z which could never happen under controlled circumstances but will happen in a flood and bulk peroxides will burn. Not to mention gas leaking out of flooded cars in the parking lot having the misfortune to ignite right next to a flammable bulk storage tank, so a pint of gas leaking out of someone AMC Gremlin in the parking lot floats over to and ignites next to a 50000 liter tank of solvent and after a small bbq starter sized fire you get a somewhat bigger "boom".

    Ironically the CYA is strong in the chemical industry so "protect the public at all costs" is causing some panic when simultaneously as per the company press release "largely sustained on our site but we are trying to be conservative." Not every can of ether exploded instantly in the "bad old days" before lab refrigeration, so if my theory is correct they have a huge cleanup problem in their future but there is almost certainly not going to be an explosion. Of course 1 in 9999 means its not likely to happen but it sure could, so CYA requires evac.

    Of course as a disclaimer I am very sleepy right now and there's probably a "duh" I'm forgetting. Peroxide chemistry is moderately interesting and I'm too sleepy to pull it up, but I seem to recall the worst of it is the low molecular weight stuff like ether turning into explosive peroxides and the higher molecular weight stuff is generally more tame, sorta. Using ether in the lab always freaked me out, like working with detonators in explosives, the odds of something happening are low but technology still hasn't found a way to make it perfectly zero. I suspect they don't let undergrads play with ether anymore. We were all told not to sniff it so logically we all sniffed it and I don't remember what it smelled like. Probably smelled like brain damage making us forget the details of peroxide chemistry a quarter century later. I know there's chemists here on SN and I'm curious what a peroxide plant would have that's unstable at room temp...

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Interesting=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:57AM

    by sjames (2882) on Saturday September 02 2017, @02:57AM (#562823) Journal

    Organic peroxides themselves will decompose exothermically. If they are in concentrated form, the reaction will run away since the heat can't dissipate fast enough.

    From the hindsight is 20/20 department, it looks like the fireworks have started [arkema-americas.com] now. Good info in that link.