The collection of grindings, shavings,
cuttings, etc. in our plants occurs on a daily basis with little notice.
Sometimes the collection becomes a housekeeping issue if the containers are not
removed on regular basis. Here is a recent incident:
A fire at an
aluminium foundry in the Eastern USA had over 100 evacuate early one morning
during the week of December 11, 2016, according to a local fire department.
The fire department
were notified of an incident at the aluminium casting foundry around 3:30 p.m.
When crews arrived, they discovered a fire resulting from a dust explosion in a
hopper used for collecting metal shavings.
The fire was put
out and the hopper was put out of service. The fire was contained to the hopper
and didn’t damage the building.
The facility was
shut down and over 115 employees were evacuated for an hour.
Investigators
discovered that a glob of hot metal was pulled into the hopper causing the
fire. Damage is estimated at $2,500.
There were no
injuries.
The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is glad
that no one was injured in this incident. We chose to omit this company’s name
and location because this plant had experienced a previous dust explosion that
resulted injured several workers. A common attribute to large explosions or
fires is that previous smaller incidents occurred but they were not properly
investigate for their root causes. We hope this incident will be properly
investigated and either procedures will be altered or engineering controls will
eliminate the potential for molten metal to come into contact in the bins
containing aluminium fines/dust/grindings, etc.
The Aluminium Times had an article about the
topic of housekeeping a while ago.
Please comment.
No comments:
Post a Comment