Terrifying Moment at Boiler HouseFew days ago, I posted something about the condition in the boiler at the plant that i work in. We tried to solve the problem and after consulting with our water treatment boiler chemical vendor and his technical expert in America, it was decided to do a caustic boiling inside the boiler to remove all possible traces of oil which was suspected to be inside the boiler. We add up caustic, trisodium phosphate and sodium phosphate and heat up to about 60oC. After monitoring the chemical blending process and pouring the chemicals into the top manhole of the boiler, I leave the boiler and do some other jobs.
Later in the aternoon, after visiting the control room in my plant, I pay a visit to the boiler to see the progress there. I tried to ask to my colleague (the person in charge of the boiler), but he was busy doing something on the boiler control panel. At that moment, I was standing nearby and diagonal to the boiler. Suddenly, there was a very loud explosion. I can slightly see some red colour flame on my right. The incident happened very fast. I was on total shocked and immedietly tried to bend down to cover myself. Then I thought, I should seek cover to protect myself by hiding behind the small boiler house/room just on my left. It was difficult to open my eyes because of the smokes and thousands of fine particles/dust which were covering/flying around the area. I fear there might me a greater secondary explosion that might wipe off the boiler and surrounding area. If that had happened, we might be history!!!
When things became ok about 30 seconds to a minute later, I have a clear picture of what actually occured. I can see smokes and some people start gathering closer to check out the incident. The burner of the boiler which have few dozens of strong bolts holding them was lying on the ground next to the front of the boiler. Thick black coloured oil was expanding and flowing slowly from the burner. All the piping and other materials nearby the burner was damaged. It was not a nice scenery.
Then I saw some people coming down from top of the boiler. I was supprised that there were people there at that time. My colleague, the steam engineer, the chemical vendor and few maintenance fitter came down from the boiler and were supprised to see the burner was ripped off from the boiler body. At that moment, we were wondering, what caused the small explosion to occur? Investigation and theory on what went wrong began.
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Deskripsi : Terrifying Moment at Boiler House Few days ago, I posted something about the condition in the boiler at the plant that i work in. We tried t...
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