"dropped a bottle of nitrogen into the molten metal...."

How quickly can it go wrong when you don’t follow your training or skip steps? Very quickly. Here is a recent story:

The local County Fire Marshal released the cause of a fire early morning at an aluminum manufacturing plant in the Midwest USA. The fired started just after 3:30 a.m.

The fire marshall said the fire was caused by a male employee who was working on a cast machine and dropped a bottle of nitrogen into the molten metal and caused an explosion that threw hot metal onto the ceiling, sparking the fire that eventually consumed the entire building.

The building was a total loss. The damage is estimated at $5-million. The fire marshall said six to eight people were in the building but no one was injured.  The man who caused the fire was wearing protective gear.

Firefighters from two nearby towns were at the scene. The fire marshall said he expected they would be there all day Wednesday and possibly Thursday.

They were using large equipment to tear down the building so they can put out hot spots still burning inside the building.

The fire marshall said the fire looked to be an accident and no criminal charges were expected.

The human resources representative for the company, said all hourly employees were told to stay home until further notice.  She said they could call her at (number deleted) if they had any questions.

According to the company website, the building was 13,200 square meters sitting on 12 hectares of land. It was one of four of the company’s facilities around the world

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is saddened that this facility was destroyed.  We hope that the facility will be able to be rebuilt. We have to acknowledge that no one was injured in the explosion and the resulting fire which is important.

Some news media articles say that the worker dropped the bottle of nitrogen into the molten metal. While others say the bottle of nitrogen was located above and “fell” into the molten metal. Regardless, of how the bottle of nitrogen ended up in the molten metal, it did. Closed containers of any sort should not be allowed anywhere near or in a facility where molten metal is present. The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog has posted incident after incident when a foreign object (e.g., contaminated alloy, explosive shell, closed cylinder, etc.). Most of these incidents were the result of poor inspection procedures that had catastrophic results. It appears that in this incident the nitrogen container was present in the facility and not in the incoming scrap delivery. We hope our readers will use this incident as a wakeup call and inspect their facility for closed containers.

When the molten metal exploded and was projected upwards and came into contact with the ceiling. The news media does not state what the combustibles were that ignited. We assume that it was aluminum dust/fines on the roof joists or even the ceiling insulation. The housekeeping of aluminium fines is now commonplace throughout our industry. But, many companies fail to acknowledge the areas that cannot be seen, such as on top of machinery, on roof joists, on top of cranes, etc. 

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