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Chemical Plant Explosions Cripple Global Diaper Output

Company News Tuesday, December 18, 2012: BI-TORQ® Valve Automation

The Garland Chemical plant in Texas and the Nippon Shokubai Chemical plant in Osaka Japan, both producers of products that require flammable substances as part of their manufacturing processes, recently experienced fires and explosions that were extremely costly.

In Garland, Texas, a fire broke out and an explosion occurred as a train car was unloading a flammable industrial fuel and fire quickly spread to an adjacent line of 80,000 gallon flammable tanks; this fuel was in jeopardy of becoming part of the conflagration. Explosions cracked windows for miles around the plant and noxious fumes sickened local residents. In order to contain the fire, a Haz Mat team was called in to formulate a plan of attack. First a one mile perimeter was set up around the plant and all businesses and residents were asked to evacuate. Next, a team went into the burning plant to access shut off valves controlling the flow of chemicals that were feeding the fire. Only at that point were firefighters able to move closer to the fire and begin the process of dousing it.

In the Japanese incident a fire broke out after an abnormal chemical reaction occurred. Again, the fire spread to nearby flammable containers making the incident much worse. A firefighter was killed and dozens of workers were injured, some seriously. The plant is the world's largest producer, at 20%, of SAP and 10% of acrylic acid, both key ingredients in the manufacture of diapers. Reports suggested that this incident could cripple the worldwide output of diapers.

These two events in far flung locations around the globe point to the need for improved design and upgrading of facilities that use flammable substances. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board has completed investigations into scores of accidents like these and issued reports suggesting that the use of smarter technology, already available, will help plants avoid adverse events.

One recent upgrade many plants are making is the inclusion of automatic shut off valves that are installed on the inlet or discharge piping of tanks. This technology employs thermal shut off valves that automatically close when they are heated above a preset temperature. These automatic shut off valves would have prevented the Haz Mat team in the Garland event from having to enter a burning plant to turn off valves and would have kept any flammable, combustible, or toxic liquids or gasses from leaking or fueling the fire.

BI-TORQ Valve Automation offers fire safe fusible link assemblies (thermal shut-off valves) to help keep flammable media contained. The first is a full BI-TORQ package which includes the fire safe ball valve. Valves. The second way the product is offered is the assemblies can also be mounted on your API 607 application specific valve. BI-TORQ design engineers will customize the mounting kit to fit just about any fire safe valve.

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