[Circumstances of Incident]
An explosion at a
plant manufacturing explosive materials destroyed the plant and injured
many people.
While the explosive (TNT) production line can be
broadly divided into the nitrification process involving a nitrification
reaction and the refining process where TNT is crystallized and refined,
the accident occurred during the crystallization in the refining
process.
In the morning of the day of the accident, a pipe from the
sodium carbonate tank under the crystallization process got clogged soon
after the start of production work for that day and a valve failed to
open. Accordingly, the pipe was heated by steam and then the valve was
opened. As a result, about one litter of sodium carbonate run into the
crystallization tank.
Following this, nitrification oil was pumped
into the crystallization tank, and the acid was separated and the
temperature was increased to start the acceptance of TNT oil. When the
drain of the crystallization tank was pulled out to smooth the flow of the
TNT oil, brown-colored smoke was emitted together with small explosion.
This smoke quickly changed to black and was accompanied by flames, and the
entire plant blew up soon thereafter.
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