Two explosions have been reported at Arkema’s plant in Crosby, Texas, a facility shut down on Friday 25 August, 2017 in anticipation of Hurricane Harvey.
The plant makes liquid organic peroxides that are used in the production of numerous products including plastic resins, polypropylene, PVC and acrylic resins.
Arkema stores its organic peroxides in refrigeration units to prevent them degrading and catching fire, but a loss of power due to flooding disabled the plant’s normal and emergency backup refrigeration systems.
The company had made a number of contingency plans in anticipation of the tropical storm; back-up generators were on site as a redundant power supply for refrigeration, and the company brought in diesel powered refrigerated tank trailers and additional fuel as a further redundancy measure.
The site lost primary power early on the morning of August 27, 2017, and the additional back-up generators were subsequently inundated by water and failed.
Arkema announced yesterday, August 30, 2017 that most of the refrigeration units had failed due to flooding and that the emergency ‘ride out’ crew had evacuated the site, which can only be accessed by boat.
In a statement issued on August 30, 2017, Rich Rowe, president and CEO, Arkema Inc said: “At Crosby, we prepared for what we recognised could be a worst case scenario. We had redundant contingency plans in place. Right now, we have an unprecedented six 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.”
All residents within a 1.5 mile radius of the Crosby plant had been evacuated prior to today’s explosions.
Based upon what this article describes, I do NOT believe any blame can be attached to Arkema, as they had indeed thought the unthinkable through! And still there was/is a problem. I hope that there will be no ‘come-back’ against them: but with the US system (which sadly we too have now introduced!) of adversarial litigation and lots of lawyers with their hands out to be filled (and some deep pockets to be rifled) …watch this space.
back-up generators were subsequently inundated :: absolutely astonishing after Fukushima & Gatwick & many more I’m sure where backup was in basement rather than on roof _ indeed even more so being not a million miles from Macondo’s mess due to denial of doubled-up blowout blockers as advocated after PiperAlpha’s Cullen commissioned critique OTO98162 was sidelined for five years for fear of retribution indeed rescued only after articles amendment initialed by new Sec State eager to sport spurs as new Labour’s new broom!
NEALE THOMAS: Perhaps you have a little confusion about both offshore platforms accidents. Please allow me to clarify.-
On Piper Alpha, the Cullen reportrightly recommended to place a second emergency Shut Down Valve (SDV) at each submarine pipeline arriving or departing every platform, because they realized that the common surface placed Shut Down Valve installed ON the platform deck was very vulnerable to damage by Explosion and or Fire, and therefore, the pipeline can feed prolonged and devastating fires. A pressurized, long gas pipeline cannot be depressurized fast enough to avoid the ruptured piping on the platform from feeding the fire, which ultimately will cause the structural collapse of the entire platform.
But on the Deepwater Horizon in USA, there were NO pipelines yet, as the floating (Semisubmergible) platform was completing an exploratory well, thus the Cullen Report recommendation does NOT apply. It was a different kind of accident altogether: A combination of 1) rush to complete the well (by extreme greed by BP), 2) A defective design/maintenance of the Blow-Out Preventer or BOP by Cameron… plus 3) A badly designed Generator Room that allowed the Diesel Generators to aspire natural gas from the leaking well to be taken as fuel by the diesel engines of the generators. Wrongly subdued in the official report, and almos brilliantly exposed in the well made cinema film (the engines overspeed caused their MECHANICAL rupture and subsecuent explosion, that constituted the “poin-of-no return” of the chanin of events. There are some devices called “Rig-Savers” that are air intake shut-down valves that prevent Internal combustion engines to continue running to overspeed and self-destruction when fed from a large leak on the platform, but those WERE NOT INSTALLED on the Deepwater Horizon Semi Platform (economies or false savings by designers/constructors?). As all too frequent, the official report minimizes the bad-engineering contribution to the accidents.
You are correct in pointing to Fukushima (I’m not familiar with Gatwick to comment). As Engineers, we MUST commit ourselves to be double, triple, whatever it takes to ENSURE, as far a we can, to avoid such engineering mistakes. And denounce them when Stoopid politicians press on us to quickly finish a projector cut corners to “save” money!. Amclaussen.
My moaning was meant merely to portray paramountcy of operational obligations for comprehensive contingency given the intolerance of intense industries to extreme excursions _ not as distraction onto details of individual incidents.
In order to avoid generators, or power supply being “inundated” how about a totally passive cooling system. Something fail-safe, like: ice; dry ice; or liquid nitrogen, depending on the temperature required, and some insulation. I’d suggest putting this on the roof, or waterproof it. This could in principle keep things cold for as long as you want, certainly the few days the plant is likely to be flooded. Since it would all ready have been cold when the floods arrived, it just needed keeping cold, not refrigerating. This could also remove the need for back-up power supplies to cope with supply power cuts as the system would ride out any likely supply interruption. It might even be cheaper than the back-up generators. I guess we don’t hear about people who do this as they don’t get in the news.
Looks as though the lesson from flooding is that emergency generators should be on the roof or in roof space areas. The cooling units probably were, but generators tend to be hidden.
There are many human-caused characteristics that greatly increased the risk of damage and loss of life from this storm. Here’s just three –
1 – Encouraging 6.5million people to live in a swamp area known (since 1836) for flooding & occasional extreme precipitation.
2 – Oil extraction so land level sinks.
3 – Draining the aquifers so land level sinks.
[ This map shows subsidence in the Houston area since 1920 mainly due to acquifer depletion..
The blues in this map are 12 feet(~ 4m ). The reds are a few inches.
https://storage.googleapis.com/2swamped/Subsi_map1.png ] thanks to Bill Illis.
Loads more info –
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/08/28/why-houston-flooding-isnt-a-sign-of-climate-change/
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/harris-countys-flooding-history/
Given the size of USA, why would anyone build such a plant in such an area?
I don’t know if Mr. Rich Rowe is an engineer (most probably not), but when the “redundant contingency plans” fail as miserably as those failed, either his engineers need to be sent back to school, or he, as CEO of the company need to pay for someone capable to do their jof in regards to industrial safety. Specially worriying are his comments about “bringing refrigerated trailers” into a Hurricane predicted disaster zone, as such trailers are easily thrown away by intense winds; just look at the many pictures of 18 wheelers either turned on theit side or destroyed by wing pressure. Redundant generators are useless if placed at low levels. Houston is a very flat and easily flooded territory, since many centuries ago. Those “contingency plans” were nothing more than badly made useless exercises of desk-type engineers that should have done a much better work. At least they would read newspapers or Wikipedia on Fukushima!
Given the size of USA, why would anyone build such a plant in such an area?
Because its surely the cheapest in ‘first-cost’ and any additional expenditure will be ‘lost (at least at the start) in some other department(s) budget! This is what clerks do for a living: and as their time-frame is at best the next quarter’s figures, do not look for any major changes any time soon.