44 hours and 250 fire fighters extinguishes blaze

 furnaces. With that all companies have to acknowledge the importance of scrap inspection prior to accepting the material. Here is a recent incident emphasizing the hazard of scrap contamination.

An European recycling company that has made a name for itself with the processing of aluminum scrap suffered a fire. A high-tech sorting system for aluminum scrap developed at the(ir) site has also attracted international attention. The company buys the aluminum from aluminum lightweight packaging, which is sorted out of the yellow bags, but also from suppliers in the car and beverage industry. The company prepares between 40,000 and 50,000 tonnes of valuable materials each year and delivers them to other companies for further processing.

The fire broke out in the storage area one night during the first week of August 2019 - without human or machine intervention, according to the company. It is assumed that a lithium battery contained in one of the valuable (aluminium) bales ignited itself. According to company spokesman, this potential circumstance is currently a major topic: "The industry has been discussing intensively for months that improperly disposed of end-user batteries pose a great danger." For security reasons, the company premises today are likely to enter only emergency services and company employees. The police initially ruled out at least negligent or intentional arson as a cause.

The Aluminium Plant Safety Blog is proud to report that no injuries were suffered in this incident. An amazing number of fire fighters were used to extinguish this tough fire. News reports state over 250 fire fighters were used throughout the operation. Congratulations to all of the emergency management personnel who were present and supported those fire departments who were occupied at this aluminium recycling plant.

We chose not to include the company name because we plan on criticizing the recycling company. So here it is. The issue of lithium batteries is an issue our industry is grasping with. Some aluminium companies have taken a proactive position in educating their scrap suppliers. These companies have had success in mitigating the contamination in the scrap they receive. The best method we have observed on our travels is when an aluminium company rejects a load of scrap due to contamination. Eventually the scrap dealer will learn. Unfortunately, there are reports of one aluminium company rejects a scrap load but the next aluminium plant accepts it. Long ago in the USA there was a scrap rejection notification program to prevent this from occurring. But, due to inactivity the program was ended.

The Aluminum Association has an informative document titled: “Guidelines for Aluminum Scrap Receiving & Inspection”. It can be found here.

Lastly, we cannot emphasize the importance of scrap inspection. We have posted numerous incidents that may have been prevented if the aluminium company they inspected their scrap before accepting it.

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