Hell...I wear safety glasses over my real glasses even when I eat dinner...cause you NEVER know! I mean, a jalapeno COULD squirt you square in the eye! Yes...I REALLY have seen that happen. Someone at work was playing with one (don't ask me why)...and got squirted square in the eye!!!!!
I wear eyeglasses but they don’t have any side or top protection. Just today I checked a mousetrap in my attic and when I opened the ceiling access panel, fiberglass insulation dust ended up falling down into my eyes. Safety goggles would’ve prevented that. My eyeglasses alone didn’t.
The guy with the safety glasses is filming in his lab. Most labs, including my own, says safety glasses for all in the lab, even if you're just walking through.
This is all sad. The case where they decided to make the acrylic polymer in one large patch instead of two small batches kind of stuck with me. I'm sure the higher ups wanted the order done over standard procedures for what ever reason. My dad used to be a safety inspecter working with chemicals. I don't remember the specifics as I was a kid, but my dad came home very angry one day saying "I ain't doing it" over and over. He later told me his company wanted to use a new process with a chemical tank. Not sure what it was, but it involved high rate vibrations. He refused, they pushed, and he said only if the company wrote up a letter saying he objected, would he allow the procedure to move forward. They stopped and never brought it up again.
And the "higher ups" always get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile other people never see some of their family members again. As for the "reason", the reason is always money.
The industry needs people who are intelligent, brave and stubborn like your father. I don't work in science industry but even in my ow work it blows my mind when manager don't implement processes to save employees bodies or increase safety :/
I'm definitely not an engineer or mathematician, but the moment they showed the smaller tank, I immediately realized that they forgot about that. How did literally no one spot that? It's not even something that's counterintuitive.
@@TimeSurfer206 I know. Sometimes you don’t even need like specialized knowledge or anything. You can just take one look and think “Wow are we really doing this?” I feel the same way about electricity. Like, I’m not expert, but I don’t feel like this should be arcing when I flip this switch? Lol
As a retired union industrial painter out of all the various jobs I was sent to, chemical, auto, refineries, manufacturing, shopping malls, etc. the one that scared me the most was. Chemical plants. Usually rusted out pipes, and valves, tanks, venting chemicals, spills. Nasty work.
I remember seeing my first "HD 1080p" plasma TV sitting next to a brand new 36" cathode ray. The images had a fidelity rarely seen outside of an IMAX theatre. Needless to say, getting old happens to the best of us and, we never looked back. Lugging over 100 lbs of glass up 2 flights of stairs isn't something I'll miss anytime soon!
@@Benson_aka_devils_advocate_88 more like >200lbs for a 36incher - Those things were *heavy* :p Edit, source www.cnet.com/products/sony-kv-36fs12-wega-36-crt-tv/
💪 @@AngDavies Was just a number off the top of my head, to be honest! 200+ sounds about right tho. I still have a "flat screen" HD _ten eighty P_ TV from mid 2000's. Drop it on your foot and it'll just amputate those toes!
I am an expedite over the road cargo van driver. I have to watch a 20 minute safety training video and pass a written 12 question exam whenever I enter a chemical plant in case an accident ever occurs while I am on plant property. It is to train me to avoid death in case an accident occurs
Similar to watching the same video every time your about to get on a chopper to go offshore and back, some guys have watched this same video 100 times !!
@Ryuukie_SE That is like calling someone who knows how to multiply numbers a nerd. It's basic math. It is taught it in the 6th grade. It's not abstract algebra, advanced calculus, or special relativity.
It seems just a bit of calculation would have prevented the accident. The amount of heat produced by the reaction and the capacity of the chiller and cooling coils should have been known quantities.
These videos are so incredibly useful for public education about how and why industrial accidents happen. Many thanks to CSB for making these accessible, I have learned so much from them.
i mean. not to be "woke" but take a long look at the skin tones of those who were killed by Chernobyl and Bhopal. sometimes racism is the reason. it is "tragic" when the victims look like you. when people believe those with darker skin tones' lives are lesser, then their deaths aren't as "tragic" and can be overlooked. Also, Chernobyl was used to criticize the USSR by the US, while Bhopal was a US-owned disaster. That's another reason why. Can't push certain politics from Bhopal like Chernobyl.
Im in printed circuit board industry in chemical waste treatment. Ive been in for 6 months and learning a lot. Had a couple scary incidents thus far but nothing on the scale of these.
So in the Synthron case: if you have a sealed container which is going to house an exothermic reaction which could dangerously increase pressure beyond the design limits of that container, why in the world would you not have a pressure relief valve which would vent the pressure to another overflow container? This venting could sound an alarm and the overflow container would give you time to get the reaction under control.
Obviously it was considered to expensive. The ideal gas law is PV=nRT so you can see if you double the gas volume available you half the pressure. Spray the overflow tank with water and you lower the gas temperature even further.
@@kimobrien. Ah, but you aren't taking enthalpy into account. Enthalpy is an extensive value, so it will grow in proportion to the amount of reactants. The reaction itself will generate proportionally more heat and that needs to be taken into account. Those are all state variables, you also have to worry about path variables too. How you got to that state matters more than the actual state with path variables like work which enthalpy is intrinsically tied to.
@@BitwiseMobile Right so your saying that as the temp of a exothermic reaction climbs the time till achieving equilibrium declines. A hotter gas means more pressure. Except for the nylon incident non of these reactors had a pressure relief valve because to release the reactants to the atmosphere that would be releasing toxic material. A pressure relief system to a second tank could have at the very least indicated a run away reaction was under way giving workers both a notice and time to prepare for an emergency situation. Total heat rises as volume (a cubic measure) increases but surface area of any type of container rises as a area (a square measure) so it never rises as quickly despite the shape of the container. This is why more cooling capability is always needed for larger vessels. Volume v Area 4/3 Pi R^3 vs 4 Pi R^2 for a sphere, Pi R^2*L vs 2*Pi R^2 + 2 Pi R*L for a cylinder.
The nylon over fill tank was never properly designed. It was assumed that if a problem developed it would be a fluid or gas problem not a problem due to solidification. More than once they must of cleaned this thing out of solid nylon. One way would have been to use a weak end that would have broken due to excess pressure. Another might have been to use a sold steel bottom with a glass see through top for visible inspection and an overfilled alarm.
I also assume the way the reactor mixes the ingredients and how things are initially inserted will play a role. That still doesn't mean that perpetration for a possible problem with over pressure occurring should have been ignored. My bet is if we compare the nuclear industry with the chemical industry we will find that the chemical industry is much more hazardous and kills more people.
The first case reminds me of the chemical plant I used to work at. But they used heat exchangers in contact with the entire outside of the acrylic reactor as well as vapor condensers and did not rely on evaporation cooling alone. It also had a huge tank to catch the batch if anything goes out of control. The plant was allready 25 years old when I worked there. Guess not everyone has the same savety standards.
@@WadcaWymiaru The vent doubles as the overflow. The problem is that it can get clogged because the material that is overflowing starts cooling and hardening much quicker.
@@NiceMuslimLady Overflow can be installed in the end, while the pipes are warmed. Plus is it not that easy for liquids to actually froze inside the pipes.(it can work on the pressure as well) Plus advantage that *overflow* has over the *vent* is slurping all overload before the reaction will start.
I need to be a CBS agent. I find the hunt of the cause, well, soothing and satisfying. The main goal to investigate, then report. I take safety seriously. I'm always amazed in the workplace, how many ppl don't care.
Many of these overpressured gas accidents could have been avoided by having a second emergency overpressure tank. Cooling should be fail safe. A gravity feed water supply should go into action should the fan and radiator fail. The overpressure tank could also be cooled with water spray but you should not rely on the water spray when sizing the tank. An overpressure tank of 1/2 size of the production tank would almost double the size for gas should a failure of the production tank half full. That should half the pressure in the tanks. If you overfill the production tank to say 3/4 full then the same overpressure tank increases the size tanks gas size by 3 and cuts the pressure by 1/3. Any cooling you provide to the emergency tank will help you maintain control. Filling a tank with a liquid that becomes solid like in the nylon example should have been built to fail in some way long before any high pressure could develop. Some kind of alarm should have gone off halting production before that tank could fill beyond a certain level.
The whole plastic one (number 2) shows the key rule of any disaster. It's usually a combination of things that lead to the problem and any single one would have prevented the deaths. They start up the plastic extruder but it's not working so hot plastic keeps pouring into the waste tank while the try to fix the extruder (1 - trying to fix the extruder while the process is running). Eventually the process is stopped but only after tank is unknowingly full (2 - No way to measure tank volume to see it was getting full). Enough plastic is in the tank so as to block the two relief tubes and pressure gauges (3 - tubes and gages are built so one problem could impact both at same time). As the plastic sits gas forms and pressure builds (4 - no pressure / rupture emergency tubing to reduce pressure when dangerous). And then the workers attempt to open the vessal (5 - no double check on releasing pressure by a secondary means for safety). Basically any disaster is a series of bad items all strung together. And while good efforts and design can reduce the odds of such items, well, it's humanity you are dealing with. So it will never be perfect.
It's a whole chain of this after that after the other thing. If the chain was broken at ANY point in the process, the disaster would not have happened. Sometimes, it's just the simple assumption that "this amount is safe". Yet, how many times do the valves corrode enough that they cannot maintain a seal?
@@NiceMuslimLady As you said it's a chain. For example the CitiCorp Center was built in NY elevated in the air on four pillars. it was designed to withstand winds estimated to occur once every 100 years. But a College Student identified a flaw as they considered only winds hitting the faces of the building. When you considered winds hitting at an angle on the corner, suddenly the structure was far weaker and could topple in winds expected to occur once every 30 years (before global warming and the increased risk of hurricanes along the east coast). They undertook a secret project to strengthen the building by welding additional 2 inch thick plating on to set places and never told the public. It later came out they also discovered a few issues in the construction (corrected in this fix) that weakened the structure further. If not for one college student identifying a major design flaw, this disaster would have been bad design + construction flaws + unexpectedly strong Hurricane = Building topples. It's always a chain and the weakest links always seem to relate to the humans.
@@walterengler5709 nicely summarised. Your comment reminded me of the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion. That was basically a string of bad decisions and issues that culminated in the worst offshore oil rig disaster and caused the deaths of 167 people.
"Okay, sure. I'll catch it." **hangs up phone and runs out into an open field with a baseball mitt** "I got it! I got it!" **gets crushed by the upper half of an exploded chemical silo**
@@jakedee4117 India found the execs guilty of homicide or full on murder but not like the US would extradite them to India despite the fact their company murdered thousands.
So that one day, when in casual conversation someone brings up entering a reactor w/o proper breathing apparatus or the joys of working in unvented sugar mills, you will be able to point to the stack of cadavers and say "NO!" It's a rare occurrence.
When you spend thousands of dollars on a reactor vessel you could at least calculate reactice speeds and energy released and cimpare it to the cooling power
9:45 I think that these organizations choose to keep their employees in the dark. Because if they are educated, have more knowledge of the process and the chemistry, they'll want more pay. Corporations can't have that. So they play this game with low cost workers and a handful of better paid educated workers.
When I was a kid I lived about 20 miles away from Morganton NC (Synthron plant). I remember the explosion shaking our home even that far away! I've never heard or felt something like that since.
There was a ship that blew up in port. The explosion was heard, AND felt over FIFTY miles away! When Krakatoa blew up...they said that it was heard ALL AROUND THE WORLD!!!
Defunding The Chemical Safety Board Is A Bad Idea And Likely To Increase Chemical DisastersUnfortunately, the 2019 budget proposed by the Trump administration zeros out funding for the USCSB. Its requested fiscal-year funding, $12 million, is modest for a government agency. Likewise, the 2018 budget also proposed to defund the USCSB. This sustained effort reflects an ongoing de-emphasis on chemical safety - as a second example, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has indefinitely delayed bans on the use of three hazardous chemicals, shown to be toxic to human health. Chemical production is an essential component of modern society. This does not mean that there is not room to improve practices in manufacturing, storing, and shipping chemicals, and in ensuring the safety of those who work in or live near chemical plants. The vantage of an independent group is crucial for identifying those aspects that can and should be improved.
I don't work in the chemical industry, but I am learning from the incidents detailed in these videos. Some ideas about process management can be generalized. The value of these videos is very high. The CSB work with a very specific set of responsibilities. Don't fix what is working.
The third instance shows that if a compound was made in a smaller reactor, the compound would not have escaped into the air and the whole thing should have been scaled up properly.
I have amnesia, so when I mix hazardous chemicals, I follow my written instructions. I make small changes based on previous analysis (80+ readings of pH, etc). Always be safe!
not sure why one would start off running a full batch when starting full scale production. i would think that you would start with smaller batches and work your way up to confirm or validate the design and that there was sufficient cooling for regular and abnormal conditions.
13:00 Do chemical engineers not have to take thermodynamics or heat transfer? Seriously how hard would it have been to do the calculation of heat being produced vs heat transfer ability of your cooling system, then leave a fat margin of safety if the byproduct of its failure is so dangerous. ..maybe my lack of education in chemistry, but if you knew the rate the reaction produced heat this was an extremely easy to avoid.
I'm not going to lie, I glanced at the thumbnail and thought it was a CGI picture of spaghetti coming out of a pasta extruder. Great video nonetheless. 😀
I believe that as long as incompetence, carelessness and ignorance and their consequences continue to be seen as 'accidents' by industry they will enviably keep happening. They are the enviable result of a fundamental lack of knowledge.
I'm not an engineer but I can tell you two things about a chemical reaction and hot chemicals; you need to size your radiator properly, and you gotta have a relief pipe or it's going to blow.
I blame engineers with the pressure of upper management to increase productivity, but have no relative experience in controlling the reactions. The operators who as I found working in both refineries and chemical plants for years almost own the equipment themselves. They’re responsible for it’s production, it’s integrity, and everyone’s safety around it. Listen to experienced operators who have been around for 10 years or more. They know their unit.
Like my engineer boss told me: LISTEN to the blue collars. They know WAY more than you do! My dad worked at a company where he made vessels for these processes...and he was CONSTANTLY complaining about the "worthless shit blueprints" he was always getting from the office monkeys. He looked at MY drawings and he said that he understood them. When I asked him "would you be able to make this?" and show him the drawings for something, he said "YES! Absolutely I could!" So, after that, anytime I came up with something, I could do the drawings and I would ask him about it. His input would be invaluable.
I do chemical water treatment for all kinds of industry and had a plastic manufacturer up in PA that utilized extruders and TCUs, etc. Had a lot to test and treat there and the molten plastic was pretty cool looking when it popped out. That whole place was covered in white dust from the conveyor belts. So annoying. There's a lot of crazy shit going on out there if you're in that industrial world. Always something new to see.
_Enthalpy is an extensive property. This means that, for homogeneous systems, the enthalpy is proportional to the size of the system._ Jesus Christ you learn that the first year of chemistry. Did these guys fail their stoichiometry classes?
I don't know what 'enthalpy' or 'stoichiometry' are. And I'm probably just as knowledgeable about those things as the managers who made the decision to dump the ingredients in all at once.
11:50 in the case of mfg it s amazing that a (graduate) chemical manager or even a bachelored technician haven’t noticed differences in the reaction and thermal disposal capacity of the heat exchanger . Its like a mechanic who puts plain water into a car radiator: either he’s suddenly foolish or totally in bad faith.
The knowledge that scaling exothermic reactions up makes things worse should be obvious to anyone who has seen a big compost pile. Surface area to volume ratio will always get you if you're unaware of it.
Yes finally. The human aspect of all these accidents is unfathomably overlooked most of the time. Must be just a nightmare to go through... these poor people. They're just considered expendable by the POS higher ups.
Serious question here - are the people in charge of these plants chemists? Many of these accidents seem to result from a lack of understanding of chemistry and/or chemical engineering. Where are the chemists overseeing these processes?
That’s the trouble with complacency. If you get too familiar with a process, than you lose the fear of it. Added to it the pressure of time and/or money and that leads to these accidents. I’ve watched a lot of these types videos and so many of them come down to these same factors.
Instead of two smaller batches let's run production in one big batch. Shouldn't there be a maximum single batch size regardless of the production order??
Oh this is the one that they never maintenanced the piping and tanks. They cut employees and they cut any maintaining. It was unstoppable with human greed. Well the union carbine one
Jake Dee might wanna add another to that list, after you see their Methyl mercaptan release video. Methyl mercaptan is the chemical responsible for the odor of feces.
Executives should be held legally and criminally liable for activities in their facilities. If your held them responsible there would be more emphasis on safety and oversight on proposed activities
So if a worker on his own, decides to take a machine apart and gets killed it's now somebody's higher ups fault?... Somebody runs a worker over with a forklift killing him ...now the owner of the factory goes to prison....? Have you ever had a job??
@@DynamicSeq - Did he say "Executives should be instantly found guilty of everything that happens in their facilities"? No? Then why are you getting so defensive and pissy about it? There are already countries with 'criminal negligence' laws that punish owners and managers who provably ignore safety laws and protocols. Which, arguably, includes not discouraging unsafe activities.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the point you're trying to make is that people should act rather than sit around thinking about how to act. If so, then I agree. However, there's nothing wrong with taking some time to sit down and think about things. In fact, it's healthy. You start to look at things in new ways, solving problems and such. Sometimes the best way to do that is to look at things in an absurd way. ("Do I really exist?")
Bhopal was nearly half owned by the Indian government, stop leaving that out. Yes, they had a 49 percent stake in Union Carbide India, the company licensed to produce Union Carbide products in India.
They should have had the Emergency Cooling Water system controls located outside the building as well, so if the building is compromised, it could still be activated.
Not necessarily to BE against our government, but for a person who sees no wrong in our government, then it would be healthy to CONSIDER the opposite point of view.
You know you’ve been quarantined too long when you start binge watching chemical process safety videos... and you work in web development
Database Development here :D
These videos are great though!
you too huh?
Retail... yeah this is definitely an odd thing to watch
Management Consultant 🤣
I like that the CSB even thanks us for watching. How considerate.
Brought to you by viewers like you ☺️
@@Bankable2790 kek
"we thank you for watching, so you won't fuck up like these people did."
This video from 2007 has chapters! Whoever at the USCSB is managing their account, has been doing a great job.
They're auto-generated by UA-cam.
Hey wait, there aren’t any chapters for me on my iPad in UA-cam app. They work on other videos I sub to. Does anyone still see them on this vid?
@@Syclone0044 yes, I see them on desktop: Introduction 0:00, Chemical Plant Explosion 2:00, Mississippi Chemical Plant 15:52, Conclusion 19:25
As an instructor for OSHA and many other safety concerns, I will tell you that we use these CSB videos religiously and appreciate the chapter format.
@@Syclone0044iPad user and YT app user here. I don’t see chapters on mine, either.
The good people at CSB are SO safe they wear safety glasses over their real glasses even when shooting a video. Now THAT'S safety you can believe in.
The camera could explode.
Hell...I wear safety glasses over my real glasses even when I eat dinner...cause you NEVER know! I mean, a jalapeno COULD squirt you square in the eye! Yes...I REALLY have seen that happen. Someone at work was playing with one (don't ask me why)...and got squirted square in the eye!!!!!
@@bdf2718 There could be unforeseen buildup of pressure caused by rusty valve
I wear eyeglasses but they don’t have any side or top protection. Just today I checked a mousetrap in my attic and when I opened the ceiling access panel, fiberglass insulation dust ended up falling down into my eyes. Safety goggles would’ve prevented that. My eyeglasses alone didn’t.
The guy with the safety glasses is filming in his lab. Most labs, including my own, says safety glasses for all in the lab, even if you're just walking through.
This is all sad. The case where they decided to make the acrylic polymer in one large patch instead of two small batches kind of stuck with me. I'm sure the higher ups wanted the order done over standard procedures for what ever reason. My dad used to be a safety inspecter working with chemicals. I don't remember the specifics as I was a kid, but my dad came home very angry one day saying "I ain't doing it" over and over. He later told me his company wanted to use a new process with a chemical tank. Not sure what it was, but it involved high rate vibrations. He refused, they pushed, and he said only if the company wrote up a letter saying he objected, would he allow the procedure to move forward. They stopped and never brought it up again.
And the "higher ups" always get nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile other people never see some of their family members again. As for the "reason", the reason is always money.
Your dad probably saved some lives
The industry needs people who are intelligent, brave and stubborn like your father. I don't work in science industry but even in my ow work it blows my mind when manager don't implement processes to save employees bodies or increase safety :/
Alexander Randolph be proud of your father. He saved lives. Follow his example. If you think its wrong, do not do it. 🙏🏻
Gov. agencies can be just as bad-remember the Challenger and NASA?
People, when you scale up your reactions, the square-cube law is not your friend
I'm definitely not an engineer or mathematician, but the moment they showed the smaller tank, I immediately realized that they forgot about that. How did literally no one spot that? It's not even something that's counterintuitive.
How the fuck some people forget about such simple things
@@ArcherHMR Because the assumption (erronious) is that BIGGER is SLOWER. Normally, that is true. But, not in this case.
Overflow is your BEST friend! I have it even in my bathtub!
(and every single hydropower plant have!)
I'm curious, are you an engineer?
Seeing that small reaction procedure bumped up to a larger vessel without taking into account surface area was just absolutely dumbfounding.
It was my first thought when I heard about the magnitude of the upscaling.
I'm just a F***ing Electrician, and I picked up on that.
@@TimeSurfer206 I know. Sometimes you don’t even need like specialized knowledge or anything. You can just take one look and think “Wow are we really doing this?” I feel the same way about electricity. Like, I’m not expert, but I don’t feel like this should be arcing when I flip this switch? Lol
@@Bankable2790 Correct, it shouldn't. Get a Beer chilled for me, I'll be over ASAP.
As a retired union industrial painter out of all the various jobs I was sent to, chemical, auto, refineries, manufacturing, shopping malls, etc. the one that scared me the most was. Chemical plants. Usually rusted out pipes, and valves, tanks, venting chemicals, spills. Nasty work.
Oh jeez. Tonight's insomniatic adventure takes us to the TRULY early days of UA-cam...
Check out the rest of this channel if you get the chance!
Haha so true...
I remember seeing my first "HD 1080p" plasma TV sitting next to a brand new 36" cathode ray. The images had a fidelity rarely seen outside of an IMAX theatre.
Needless to say, getting old happens to the best of us and, we never looked back. Lugging over 100 lbs of glass up 2 flights of stairs isn't something I'll miss anytime soon!
@@Benson_aka_devils_advocate_88 more like >200lbs for a 36incher - Those things were *heavy* :p
Edit, source
www.cnet.com/products/sony-kv-36fs12-wega-36-crt-tv/
💪 @@AngDavies Was just a number off the top of my head, to be honest!
200+ sounds about right tho. I still have a "flat screen" HD _ten eighty P_ TV from mid 2000's. Drop it on your foot and it'll just amputate those toes!
These are fantastic videos.
Shame on you 😬
But the outcomes tragic. :[
I like that my taxes go to csb to make us all safer. These guys do all the heavy lifting.
@@vikraal6974 He said these are fantastic videos, not the events taken place within these videos are fantastic..
But the video quality isn't
The manager who made the decision to speed up production and blow the place up was promoted and given a large raise.
I am an expedite over the road cargo van driver. I have to watch a 20 minute safety training video and pass a written 12 question exam whenever I enter a chemical plant in case an accident ever occurs while I am on plant property. It is to train me to avoid death in case an accident occurs
Similar to watching the same video every time your about to get on a chopper to go offshore and back, some guys have watched this same video 100 times !!
And every time you get on a plane you have to go thru the whole pre-flight safety briefing.
Argh! Cubes and squares! Cubes and squares! Volume increases in cubes, surface increases in squares!
Give them a break. They went to American Public Schools.
@Ryuukie_SE
That is like calling someone who knows how to multiply numbers a nerd.
It's basic math. It is taught it in the 6th grade.
It's not abstract algebra, advanced calculus, or special relativity.
It seems just a bit of calculation would have prevented the accident. The amount of heat produced by the reaction and the capacity of the chiller and cooling coils should have been known quantities.
Unless they increased volume by only adding height to the vessels
@@shimes424 then it would have been a seriously tall vessel !!! LOL.
Life means nothing when money runs the show........
These videos are so incredibly useful for public education about how and why industrial accidents happen. Many thanks to CSB for making these accessible, I have learned so much from them.
Bhopal is to chemical plants what Chernobyl is to nuclear power plants. Amazing that most people don't even know about it.
Except Bhopal is about 8x worse
i mean. not to be "woke" but take a long look at the skin tones of those who were killed by Chernobyl and Bhopal. sometimes racism is the reason. it is "tragic" when the victims look like you. when people believe those with darker skin tones' lives are lesser, then their deaths aren't as "tragic" and can be overlooked. Also, Chernobyl was used to criticize the USSR by the US, while Bhopal was a US-owned disaster. That's another reason why. Can't push certain politics from Bhopal like Chernobyl.
HUGE cloud of explosive gas filling a building
Let's stand near by..
Good idea! What could go wrong? I mean, the building SHOULD be capable of CONTAINING any explosions, right?
The guy talking at 16:40 sounds like Otacon.
I don't know why, but I've been binging these videos. they're surprisingly interesting.
Min Lungelow they sure are, and I never even worked in that industry!
I started watching car crashes then fatal forklift compilations then history channels worst construction disasters which led me here lol
A narrator to surpass Metal Gear.
“Do you think love can bloom even on the oil field?” - Safety supervisor, Otacon
Im in printed circuit board industry in chemical waste treatment. Ive been in for 6 months and learning a lot. Had a couple scary incidents thus far but nothing on the scale of these.
So in the Synthron case: if you have a sealed container which is going to house an exothermic reaction which could dangerously increase pressure beyond the design limits of that container, why in the world would you not have a pressure relief valve which would vent the pressure to another overflow container? This venting could sound an alarm and the overflow container would give you time to get the reaction under control.
Obviously it was considered to expensive. The ideal gas law is PV=nRT so you can see if you double the gas volume available you half the pressure. Spray the overflow tank with water and you lower the gas temperature even further.
@@kimobrien. Ah, but you aren't taking enthalpy into account. Enthalpy is an extensive value, so it will grow in proportion to the amount of reactants. The reaction itself will generate proportionally more heat and that needs to be taken into account. Those are all state variables, you also have to worry about path variables too. How you got to that state matters more than the actual state with path variables like work which enthalpy is intrinsically tied to.
@@BitwiseMobile Right so your saying that as the temp of a exothermic reaction climbs the time till achieving equilibrium declines. A hotter gas means more pressure. Except for the nylon incident non of these reactors had a pressure relief valve because to release the reactants to the atmosphere that would be releasing toxic material.
A pressure relief system to a second tank could have at the very least indicated a run away reaction was under way giving workers both a notice and time to prepare for an emergency situation. Total heat rises as volume (a cubic measure) increases but surface area of any type of container rises as a area (a square measure) so it never rises as quickly despite the shape of the container. This is why more cooling capability is always needed for larger vessels. Volume v Area 4/3 Pi R^3 vs 4 Pi R^2 for a sphere, Pi R^2*L vs 2*Pi R^2 + 2 Pi R*L for a cylinder.
The nylon over fill tank was never properly designed. It was assumed that if a problem developed it would be a fluid or gas problem not a problem due to solidification. More than once they must of cleaned this thing out of solid nylon. One way would have been to use a weak end that would have broken due to excess pressure. Another might have been to use a sold steel bottom with a glass see through top for visible inspection and an overfilled alarm.
I also assume the way the reactor mixes the ingredients and how things are initially inserted will play a role. That still doesn't mean that perpetration for a possible problem with over pressure occurring should have been ignored. My bet is if we compare the nuclear industry with the chemical industry we will find that the chemical industry is much more hazardous and kills more people.
This channel is BOSS! I can’t stop watching.
The first case reminds me of the chemical plant I used to work at.
But they used heat exchangers in contact with the entire outside of the acrylic reactor as well as vapor condensers and did not rely on evaporation cooling alone. It also had a huge tank to catch the batch if anything goes out of control. The plant was allready 25 years old when I worked there. Guess not everyone has the same savety standards.
There is no such thing as TOO safe. Especially when you have people who always say "what could go wrong?" after every idea.
@@NiceMuslimLady
LOL12 years has passed XD
However still i saw the problem: lack of the overflow.
@@WadcaWymiaru The vent doubles as the overflow. The problem is that it can get clogged because the material that is overflowing starts cooling and hardening much quicker.
@@NiceMuslimLady
Overflow can be installed in the end, while the pipes are warmed. Plus is it not that easy for liquids to actually froze inside the pipes.(it can work on the pressure as well) Plus advantage that *overflow* has over the *vent* is slurping all overload before the reaction will start.
@@WadcaWymiaru Really? So...how is it that the hot plastic clogged the vent of the tank?
I know more about industrial safety from binging these videos than probably most plant managers
Evac locations should be far away from the structure and behind a barrier if there is an explosion hazard.
For once it wasn't Monsanto's fault.
This time walmarts fault plastic retail
Three words for MFG Chemical: Square Cube Law
Remember: The Square Cube Law can either be your best friend (if you listen to it)...OR YOUR WORST ENEMY (if you don't)!!!
I need to be a CBS agent. I find the hunt of the cause, well, soothing and satisfying. The main goal to investigate, then report. I take safety seriously. I'm always amazed in the workplace, how many ppl don't care.
Many of these overpressured gas accidents could have been avoided by having a second emergency overpressure tank. Cooling should be fail safe. A gravity feed water supply should go into action should the fan and radiator fail. The overpressure tank could also be cooled with water spray but you should not rely on the water spray when sizing the tank.
An overpressure tank of 1/2 size of the production tank would almost double the size for gas should a failure of the production tank half full. That should half the pressure in the tanks. If you overfill the production tank to say 3/4 full then the same overpressure tank increases the size tanks gas size by 3 and cuts the pressure by 1/3. Any cooling you provide to the emergency tank will help you maintain control.
Filling a tank with a liquid that becomes solid like in the nylon example should have been built to fail in some way long before any high pressure could develop. Some kind of alarm should have gone off halting production before that tank could fill beyond a certain level.
The whole plastic one (number 2) shows the key rule of any disaster. It's usually a combination of things that lead to the problem and any single one would have prevented the deaths. They start up the plastic extruder but it's not working so hot plastic keeps pouring into the waste tank while the try to fix the extruder (1 - trying to fix the extruder while the process is running). Eventually the process is stopped but only after tank is unknowingly full (2 - No way to measure tank volume to see it was getting full). Enough plastic is in the tank so as to block the two relief tubes and pressure gauges (3 - tubes and gages are built so one problem could impact both at same time). As the plastic sits gas forms and pressure builds (4 - no pressure / rupture emergency tubing to reduce pressure when dangerous). And then the workers attempt to open the vessal (5 - no double check on releasing pressure by a secondary means for safety).
Basically any disaster is a series of bad items all strung together. And while good efforts and design can reduce the odds of such items, well, it's humanity you are dealing with. So it will never be perfect.
It's a whole chain of this after that after the other thing. If the chain was broken at ANY point in the process, the disaster would not have happened. Sometimes, it's just the simple assumption that "this amount is safe". Yet, how many times do the valves corrode enough that they cannot maintain a seal?
@@NiceMuslimLady As you said it's a chain. For example the CitiCorp Center was built in NY elevated in the air on four pillars. it was designed to withstand winds estimated to occur once every 100 years. But a College Student identified a flaw as they considered only winds hitting the faces of the building. When you considered winds hitting at an angle on the corner, suddenly the structure was far weaker and could topple in winds expected to occur once every 30 years (before global warming and the increased risk of hurricanes along the east coast). They undertook a secret project to strengthen the building by welding additional 2 inch thick plating on to set places and never told the public. It later came out they also discovered a few issues in the construction (corrected in this fix) that weakened the structure further. If not for one college student identifying a major design flaw, this disaster would have been bad design + construction flaws + unexpectedly strong Hurricane = Building topples. It's always a chain and the weakest links always seem to relate to the humans.
@@walterengler5709 Exactly!
@@walterengler5709 nicely summarised. Your comment reminded me of the Piper Alpha oil platform explosion. That was basically a string of bad decisions and issues that culminated in the worst offshore oil rig disaster and caused the deaths of 167 people.
Hello, is your reactor running?
Yes! Why?
Well you better go catch it!
"Okay, sure. I'll catch it."
**hangs up phone and runs out into an open field with a baseball mitt**
"I got it! I got it!"
**gets crushed by the upper half of an exploded chemical silo**
US owned, but not when it came to paying compensation.
They don't pay according to citizenship. They pay whatever need to have workers do their jobs.
Donald Sayers union carbide owned the plant in Bhopal and they most certainly paid and went bankrupt due to compensation costs
Was anyone found criminally liable ? It certainly sounds like negligent homicide.
@@jakedee4117 India found the execs guilty of homicide or full on murder but not like the US would extradite them to India despite the fact their company murdered thousands.
I really want to jump on the “murder” wagon but things are going to happen when playing mine craft RL it’s nice to see we try to make things better
It's 11pm. Why am I watching CSB videos endlessly. What is the meaning of life?
So that one day, when in casual conversation someone brings up entering a reactor w/o proper breathing apparatus or the joys of working in unvented sugar mills, you will be able to point to the stack of cadavers and say "NO!"
It's a rare occurrence.
The meaning of life: To NOT repeat the mistakes of others. AKA...LEARNING from history instead of repeating it.
These videos and this whole chanel is great, who would think that they could make these saftey videos so entertaining. A+
When you spend thousands of dollars on a reactor vessel you could at least calculate reactice speeds and energy released and cimpare it to the cooling power
9:45 I think that these organizations choose to keep their employees in the dark. Because if they are educated, have more knowledge of the process and the chemistry, they'll want more pay. Corporations can't have that. So they play this game with low cost workers and a handful of better paid educated workers.
9:11
this is me after i drink 2 liters of milk and eat half a kilo of cheese within the timespan of 1 hour
These videos are very well done.
9:54 "Or (not) communicated to workers"
Sounds like a City of Los Angeles operation.
pigjubby1 so true
When I was a kid I lived about 20 miles away from Morganton NC (Synthron plant).
I remember the explosion shaking our home even that far away! I've never heard or felt something like that since.
There was a ship that blew up in port. The explosion was heard, AND felt over FIFTY miles away! When Krakatoa blew up...they said that it was heard ALL AROUND THE WORLD!!!
Defunding The Chemical Safety Board Is A Bad Idea And Likely To Increase Chemical DisastersUnfortunately, the 2019 budget proposed by the Trump administration zeros out funding
for the USCSB. Its requested fiscal-year funding, $12 million, is
modest for a government agency. Likewise, the 2018 budget also proposed to defund the USCSB.
This sustained effort reflects an ongoing de-emphasis on chemical
safety - as a second example, Environmental Protection Agency
Administrator Scott Pruitt has indefinitely delayed bans on the use of three hazardous chemicals, shown to be toxic to human health.
Chemical production is an essential component of modern society. This
does not mean that there is not room to improve practices in
manufacturing, storing, and shipping chemicals, and in ensuring the
safety of those who work in or live near chemical plants. The vantage of
an independent group is crucial for identifying those aspects that can
and should be improved.
Yet all I hear is "so much winning" & "liberal tears". Please communicate this threat to others!
I don't work in the chemical industry, but I am learning from the incidents detailed in these videos. Some ideas about process management can be generalized. The value of these videos is very high. The CSB work with a very specific set of responsibilities.
Don't fix what is working.
That moron likely doesnt even know what the CSB is.
I always love these videos.
The third instance shows that if a compound was made in a smaller reactor, the compound would not have escaped into the air and the whole thing should have been scaled up properly.
I'm gonna be SO safe if I ever decide to leave the house. Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll run out of educational videos.
9:10 when you bite into a microwaved jawbreaker
This time I want you to do the entire process in one step. I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong???
I hope these videos are done in a higher resolution. Still love them.
Very good for safety training to prevent industrial accidents
I have amnesia, so when I mix hazardous chemicals, I follow my written instructions. I make small changes based on previous analysis (80+ readings of pH, etc). Always be safe!
I feel for the loved ones for this and the other tragedies. But these are so informative.
TankQ so much for showing these films. If it saves lives, that's what matters...
DRC. ;)
My grandfather was an element of production hardware in 1935 and would loved to have seen this video.
My main takeaway from USCSB videos is that cooperate greed rules the roost.
safety 1st 1st 1st
quality 2nd
production3rd
BE SAFE
IF YOU DONT IT SAFELY DONT DO IT ALL
That sounds expensive, won't you please think of the shareholders?
not sure why one would start off running a full batch when starting full scale production. i would think that you would start with smaller batches and work your way up to confirm or validate the design and that there was sufficient cooling for regular and abnormal conditions.
Money. Small batches are wasted time.
Time is money.
Simple.
13:00 Do chemical engineers not have to take thermodynamics or heat transfer? Seriously how hard would it have been to do the calculation of heat being produced vs heat transfer ability of your cooling system, then leave a fat margin of safety if the byproduct of its failure is so dangerous. ..maybe my lack of education in chemistry, but if you knew the rate the reaction produced heat this was an extremely easy to avoid.
Have you seen the formulas for calculating calorimetry? It's very complicated..
I think I watched every video from the CSB and I don't even know how I got into it.
I love you'r videos so much ❤️
The thumbnail is everything.
A very intresting video
Absolutely can't wait for the USCSB video on the train accident
I'm not going to lie, I glanced at the thumbnail and thought it was a CGI picture of spaghetti coming out of a pasta extruder. Great video nonetheless. 😀
I can only imagine how many training centers charge to watch these videos on this channel
I believe that as long as incompetence, carelessness and ignorance and their consequences continue to be seen as 'accidents' by industry they will enviably keep happening. They are the enviable result of a fundamental lack of knowledge.
I'm not an engineer but I can tell you two things about a chemical reaction and hot chemicals; you need to size your radiator properly, and you gotta have a relief pipe or it's going to blow.
I blame engineers with the pressure of upper management to increase productivity, but have no relative experience in controlling the reactions. The operators who as I found working in both refineries and chemical plants for years almost own the equipment themselves. They’re responsible for it’s production, it’s integrity, and everyone’s safety around it. Listen to experienced operators who have been around for 10 years or more. They know their unit.
Like my engineer boss told me: LISTEN to the blue collars. They know WAY more than you do! My dad worked at a company where he made vessels for these processes...and he was CONSTANTLY complaining about the "worthless shit blueprints" he was always getting from the office monkeys. He looked at MY drawings and he said that he understood them. When I asked him "would you be able to make this?" and show him the drawings for something, he said "YES! Absolutely I could!" So, after that, anytime I came up with something, I could do the drawings and I would ask him about it. His input would be invaluable.
I do chemical water treatment for all kinds of industry and had a plastic manufacturer up in PA that utilized extruders and TCUs, etc. Had a lot to test and treat there and the molten plastic was pretty cool looking when it popped out. That whole place was covered in white dust from the conveyor belts. So annoying. There's a lot of crazy shit going on out there if you're in that industrial world. Always something new to see.
The violence of the second case likely resulted it body parts being ripped off the victims. I couldn't even imagine going out like that.
These videos are gold,,I wonder if they're still this on it,I hope so
If the CSB has a video on you, it wasn’t because you did a good job.
you guys ever just watch this because youre bored
_Enthalpy is an extensive property. This means that, for homogeneous systems, the enthalpy is proportional to the size of the system._ Jesus Christ you learn that the first year of chemistry. Did these guys fail their stoichiometry classes?
more likely the ones that are making the decisions are not the ones that took chemistry... they only care about costs in and profits out.
I don't know what 'enthalpy' or 'stoichiometry' are. And I'm probably just as knowledgeable about those things as the managers who made the decision to dump the ingredients in all at once.
The thumbnail looks like the entire universe has suffered a complete nuclear explosion.
Chain reactions happen when a substance reaches critical mass
11:50 in the case of mfg it s amazing that a (graduate) chemical manager or even a bachelored technician haven’t noticed differences in the reaction and thermal disposal capacity of the heat exchanger . Its like a mechanic who puts plain water into a car radiator: either he’s suddenly foolish or totally in bad faith.
The knowledge that scaling exothermic reactions up makes things worse should be obvious to anyone who has seen a big compost pile. Surface area to volume ratio will always get you if you're unaware of it.
Yes finally. The human aspect of all these accidents is unfathomably overlooked most of the time. Must be just a nightmare to go through... these poor people. They're just considered expendable by the POS higher ups.
Many people see “reactor”,and immediately think of radioactivity…
Serious question here - are the people in charge of these plants chemists? Many of these accidents seem to result from a lack of understanding of chemistry and/or chemical engineering. Where are the chemists overseeing these processes?
Most of the time management of an operation isn't all that familiar with the process. Their skills are managing people and increasing production.
Even I know that what I mix in a tiny bowl won't be the same in a giant pot!!!!! And Im not even a chemistry student!!!!!
That’s the trouble with complacency. If you get too familiar with a process, than you lose the fear of it. Added to it the pressure of time and/or money and that leads to these accidents.
I’ve watched a lot of these types videos and so many of them come down to these same factors.
Instead of two smaller batches let's run production in one big batch. Shouldn't there be a maximum single batch size regardless of the production order??
In the first instance, the compound should have been made the way it was meant to be, adding the material in small batches.
Oh this is the one that they never maintenanced the piping and tanks. They cut employees and they cut any maintaining. It was unstoppable with human greed. Well the union carbine one
Death by hot plastic ! My God ! That's going on my top 10 horrible ways to die list, after Zombie horde and Nazi gas chamber.
Jake Dee might wanna add another to that list, after you see their Methyl mercaptan release video. Methyl mercaptan is the chemical responsible for the odor of feces.
How did the first case not have an over pressure vent to atmosphere? A pressure vessel with no safely relief valve?
Executives should be held legally and criminally liable for activities in their facilities. If your held them responsible there would be more emphasis on safety and oversight on proposed activities
So if a worker on his own, decides to take a machine apart and gets killed it's now somebody's higher ups fault?... Somebody runs a worker over with a forklift killing him ...now the owner of the factory goes to prison....? Have you ever had a job??
@@DynamicSeq - Did he say "Executives should be instantly found guilty of everything that happens in their facilities"? No? Then why are you getting so defensive and pissy about it?
There are already countries with 'criminal negligence' laws that punish owners and managers who provably ignore safety laws and protocols. Which, arguably, includes not discouraging unsafe activities.
I know this is about accidents the csb investigated, but Chernobyl also falls into this category. Kinda
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the point you're trying to make is that people should act rather than sit around thinking about how to act. If so, then I agree.
However, there's nothing wrong with taking some time to sit down and think about things. In fact, it's healthy. You start to look at things in new ways, solving problems and such. Sometimes the best way to do that is to look at things in an absurd way. ("Do I really exist?")
If the world had not heard of this, do you think those CEOs would have changed their M.O.?
Nope
Bhopal was nearly half owned by the Indian government, stop leaving that out. Yes, they had a 49 percent stake in Union Carbide India, the company licensed to produce Union Carbide products in India.
Why am I binge watching these...
They should have had the Emergency Cooling Water system controls located outside the building as well, so if the building is compromised, it could still be activated.
Sad that accidents create change not before a death happens
Excelente explicaciones. Para los que hablamos español sería bueno que el USCSB realizará algunas traducciones.
I can't be the only one to click because of what looked like an explosive case of diarrhea.
11:07 that "time" sound reminded me to GTA for some reason, even though I dont play GTA
Not very pleasant to get blasted with hot poisonous molten plastic .
@@samlabo1688 yes very , i do know that you might feel the very first pain sensations when you fall into it, might take longer.
Death in the burn unit is often a merciful thing. Terrible thing, burns!
Not necessarily to BE against our government, but for a person who sees no wrong in our government, then it would be healthy to CONSIDER the opposite point of view.
Bhopal is the inevitable consequence of corporate globalism .
Yeah, that's how it is
India and Indian companies don't bother with safety either.
@Serostern i am talking about DOW standard ...
When the boiler in your house has better fail safes you know they were incompetent
This is the equivalent of dumping all the hardener in a gallon of bondo in one shot. Let's just say very exothermic.
The next girl I meet on Tinder I am going to CSB Safety Video and Chill with
Haha this needs to be a thing