Explosion sent shockwaves around the world......

Prior to the proliferation of social media an incident in one plant would only be known to the surrounding community. On occasion the incident was large some media companies would write a story. Now it is not uncommon for an incident to publicized on social media. Here is a recent incident that made international news and sent the financial markets into a frenzy.

An aluminum plant in China on November 18th, the leakage furnace accident, resulting in a series of complete suspension, affecting the annual production capacity of 300,000 tons. About to understand the situation, this groove for the new start-up slot, about 4-5 days, 2 days ago in the cover of insulation material, material into the electrolyte too much, resulting in electrolyte does not work, aluminum secondary reaction is serious, burned for 2 days, the groove temperature as high as 1400 degrees c, in order to cooling, added a large number of aluminum ingots, bus in the upper limit, voltage can not be maintained, also dare not carry out bus down operation, yesterday (november 18) at 9:00 am this slot, although the slot, but aluminum has been burning in the electrolytic cell secondary reaction, the secondary reaction is a heat release reaction, releasing a large amount of heat, so the temperature of the electrolytic cell has been very high, to 18:00 pm this groove leakage furnace, high temperature aluminum water leakage to the tank continue to burn, resulting in the foundation is also destroyed, in addition, in order to reduce leakage to the bottom of the tank aluminum liquid, arrange for the crane lift bag to carry out aluminum work, and finally because the temperature is too high, the sky car also burned down. at the end of the year, electrolytic brothers work to pay attention to safety, production of high temperature grooves to focus on, stop slots do not mean safety, as long as the high temperature aluminum liquid is still in the groove, the danger is not lifted.

When we are made aware of an incident, we always pray that no one is injured nor killed. Why? Because over the past decade of writing about 800+ incidents it is the injuries and deaths that we personally find the hardest to deal with. Why? Because even though we do not post any workers photos, names nor their personal stories. We simply cannot their faces, names, and the stories of their lives. It is because of the injured workers and those who lost their lives in our industry that we continue with this blog. It is our sincere hope that the incidents posted on the Aluminium Plant Safety Blog will be used to prevent a future recurrence.

Regarding this incident the malfunction of one pot and subsequent fire and explosions resulted in the entire potline stopping resulting in the solidification of all pots. Resulting in the loss of 300,000 tons of production. It is the loss of 300,000 tons of production that made the news and created an impact in the LME. 

This incident would be a good example for the management of a potline to ask “what is our procedure if something similar happened in our potline?”

Please comment.