We are nothing after our death. Let us donate our body organs for the poor.

Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work The moment you fear, you are nobody - Swamy Vivekananda

If you think safety is expensive, try an accident... - O.P.Kharbanda

Preventable accidents, if they are not prevented due to our negligence, it is nothing short of a murder - Dr. Sarvepalli Radha Krishna, 2nd President of India

Zero accidents through zero unsafe behaviors. Do not be complacent that there are no accidents. There may be near miss accidents (NMAs). With luck/chance, somebody escaped knowingly or unknown to the person. But, we can't be safe, if we depend upon the luck.

Safety culture is how the organization behaves when no one is watching.

We make No compromise with respect to Morality, Ethics, or Safety. If a design or work practice is perceived to be unsafe, we do not proceed until the issue is resolved. - Mission statement by S&B Engineers & Consultants Ltd. http://www.sbec.com/safety/

Human meat gets least priority - A doctor's comment on accidents

CSB video excerpts from Dr.Trevor Kletz, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQn5fL62KL8

Showing posts with label earthing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label earthing. Show all posts

Feb 5, 2011

Fire during solvent transfer in buckets from drums

2-3 days back, I read a news item in a regional news paper that there was fire while transferring a solvent with a plastic bucket from drums. There were sparks followed by big fire.
It is clearly due to static charge builtup during dipping of plastic bucket in drums containing solvent. Static charge is generated due to friction between conducting (metal drum) and non-conducting (solvent, bucket) media. For solvent transfer, one should provide proper piping arrangement with earthing and bonding to dissipate the charge accumulated.
Few years back, I read a case study in which a fire occurred while transferring the solvent through braided plastic hose. Investigation revealed that the electrical continuiity was broken as there was no contact between the nozzle and the metal braid reinforcement to the hose. During transfer for extended time, the accumulated charge on the hose discharged as spark causing fire.
Hence, earthing and bonding are important aspects and one should avoid short term measures like bucket transfer to avoid recurrence of such fire incidents. Further, the operators should not wear synthetic dress (wear only cotton dress), wear antistatic foot wear, ensure turbulence, nozzle spray, etc to avoid static charge generation/accumulation.

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