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London News
Reproduced below are items LONDON NEWS frow the London Fire Brigade Petroleum Branch Information -
Unfortunate coincidence
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A teenager died after being bad13' burned when petrol vapour was ignited by a cooker in the kitchen of a two-storey dwelling. The lad misplaced the screw top of a petrol can after filling the fuel tank of a motor mower while mowing a lawn. He went into the house to ask his friend if he had seen the screw top of the can, taking the can with him. He left the can on the kitchen floor while he went into another room to see his friend. The ignition of petrol vapour unfortunately coincided with his return to the kitchen.
Unsafe equipment
As part of a toluene extraction process at a chemical factory an organic base material is partly stripped of toluene by steam before being taken in a laGged vessel to be heated by gas. The residual toluene is then condensed for collection in a glass receiver. An employee operating the condensation part of the process suffered burns to his hands, face and neck as a result of a fire involving the toluene.
It is conjectured that after turning off the gas supply the operator dropped the glass receiver when removing it. Condensate was spilled and vapour from it was ignited by the hot combustion chamber. The fire was extinguished by an automatic C02 system.
Exothermic reaction
A fire occurred in an Organo-Tin plant at a chemical factory when the plant was re-used following a few weeks shut down. To enable one of the process vessels to be repaired the paint had to be steamed out. In course of this water unbeknown entered the underground cyclo-hexane storage tank.
the plant was re-started, water instead of cyclo-hexane was pumped into the process vessels. The presence of water instead of cyclo-hexane in the plant caused' an exothermic reaction and raised the temperature within the plant to about 200 degrees C - well in excess of the auto ignition temperature of one of the solvents, di-ethyl-ether.
The fire was confined to the plant with slight damage to a nearby timber building
Defective sealing ring
Engineers checking a submerged pump installation at a petrol filling station found a substantial quantity of petrol in the chamber housing the pump. The pump head was dismantled and a defective sealing ring was discovered. Being upstream of the leak detector valve the leak was not detected. Examination of the licensee's stock records showed a book loss of about 6,000 gallons of petrol over a three months period.
Pit trouble
At a vehicle engine plant petrol is pumped by means of an air-operated pump to a header tank on the outside wall of the factory building from whence it is piped to an engine testing area inside the building.
When the senior petroleum inspector for the district was notified that petrol had leaked from the system into the factory he found an un-used pit 4 feet deep and measuring 5m x 7m in area beneath the factory floor and adjacent to the header tank position. Offices for senior management have been provided over the pit. He found about 9 inches of liquid in the pit, the top half inch of which was petrol.
The cause of the leak was the failure of a diaphragm of an air-operated valve on the pipeline immediately before the header tank and petrol had leaked through the defeCtive wall of the valve chamber into the pit. The atmosphere both in the pit and the manhole chamber in excess of 100% LEL so the lnspector immediately stopped repair work until breathing apparatus had been provided.
