East Palestine OH Train Derailment & Major Fire 2/3/23

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Apr 1, 2007
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Happened around 9PM Friday. As of 10AM Saturday, fire continues to burn.



 
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Sep 7, 2020
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Yes. This car is undergoing a polymerization reaction inside the tank car. The reaction is performed in controlled reactors at a manufacturing plant where monomers are reacted into polymers. During the reaction heat, gas, and pressure are created. Due to the instability of these monomers such as vinyl chloride, styrene, butadiene, ethylene , etc they are shipped mixed with an inhibitor (chemical) until it’s use at the chemical plant. If too much time passes between the addition of the inhibitors and the actual use in polymer production, a polymerization reaction can occur, if the container holding a monomer is exposed to elevated temperatures, the inhibitors can break down allowing the polymerization reaction to occur. So bringing us back to the East Palestine derailment here : the Vinyl Chloride car(s) have been sitting an additional 4 days passed delivery date AND have been exposed to significant elevated temperatures (radiant heat from a massive fire) and have more than likely begun the polymerization reaction inside the rail car. Remember the reaction generates heat, gas, and pressure. So basically this 80 ton rail car with 5/8” thick steel shell is becoming a giant pressure cooker. Worse, if the tank car is on its side or upside down, the relief valve on the cars will not operate ( formed polymers are most often solids produced from liquid monomers so the solid polymer often clogs up a relief valve) Unlike a BLEVE where liquified gases inside a tank are heated from the outside via fire and therefore can often be cooled with master streams to prevent an explosion, the polymerization reaction is generating its own heat from within the tank as well as building up pressure from the gasses produced and the expansion produced. Sometimes a runaway Polymerization reaction will end without bursting the rail car or tank , historically there have also been polymerization reaction explosions which have blasted the tank car like a giant hand grenade. So responders will monitor the car temperature and wait the reaction out. BTW - an example of a controlled polymerization reaction is a can of foam window and crack sealant. The can contains liquid which you shake up prior to use - as you depress the button on the can top the liquid is expelled and converts to a semisolid upon contacting air and expands tremendously until it completely solidifies. Now picture that same process going on within an 80 Ton steel tank with no outlet. ! That concludes todays science class 🤣🤣🤣. Stay safe
 
Joined
Jun 27, 2017
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It's 1968. I've got a summer job working in a chemical plant.

Day 1- I meet the plant manager. I'll be spending the summer doing a piping diagram of the compressed air lines for the entire plant. Then I go to the safety office, I get a hard hat, googles, and a mouth respirator with nose clips. I'm repeatedly advised that if there is a "problem" to run crosswind. None of this is encouraging. The prevailing winds are out of the south. Running west is a mile-odd long Shell Oil refinery making heaven knows what. To the east is a Rohm and Haas plant that would blow up twice that summer.

Day 2- I walk around the corner of a building into a cloud of chlorine gas. The respirator and running crosswind are of no help. For about two hours I think I'm going to die.

Over the summer I learned that just about everything was 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, 1000 psig, or 13,000 to 69,000 volts. I'm afraid to touch anything. I stopped wearing a wristwatch. I didn't want an electrical conductor on sweaty skin.

So what did this plant make? Vinyl chloride! No one ever mentioned it was dangerous.
 
Joined
Sep 7, 2020
Messages
1,537
It's 1968. I've got a summer job working in a chemical plant.

Day 1- I meet the plant manager. I'll be spending the summer doing a piping diagram of the compressed air lines for the entire plant. Then I go to the safety office, I get a hard hat, googles, and a mouth respirator with nose clips. I'm repeatedly advised that if there is a "problem" to run crosswind. None of this is encouraging. The prevailing winds are out of the south. Running west is a mile-odd long Shell Oil refinery making heaven knows what. To the east is a Rohm and Haas plant that would blow up twice that summer.

Day 2- I walk around the corner of a building into a cloud of chlorine gas. The respirator and running crosswind are of no help. For about two hours I think I'm going to die.

Over the summer I learned that just about everything was 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, 1000 psig, or 13,000 to 69,000 volts. I'm afraid to touch anything. I stopped wearing a wristwatch. I didn't want an electrical conductor on sweaty skin.

So what did this plant make? Vinyl chloride! No one ever mentioned it was dangerous.
Wow. What an experience things were so different back then. The spills, leaks, fires, explosions, derailments and toxic waste sites of the 60’s and 70’s were the catalyst for the massive federal hazmat regulations and training laws of the mid 80’s Thanks for sharing
 

mack

Administrator
Joined
Aug 8, 2009
Messages
13,431
It's 1968. I've got a summer job working in a chemical plant.

Day 1- I meet the plant manager. I'll be spending the summer doing a piping diagram of the compressed air lines for the entire plant. Then I go to the safety office, I get a hard hat, googles, and a mouth respirator with nose clips. I'm repeatedly advised that if there is a "problem" to run crosswind. None of this is encouraging. The prevailing winds are out of the south. Running west is a mile-odd long Shell Oil refinery making heaven knows what. To the east is a Rohm and Haas plant that would blow up twice that summer.

Day 2- I walk around the corner of a building into a cloud of chlorine gas. The respirator and running crosswind are of no help. For about two hours I think I'm going to die.

Over the summer I learned that just about everything was 1000 degrees Fahrenheit, 1000 psig, or 13,000 to 69,000 volts. I'm afraid to touch anything. I stopped wearing a wristwatch. I didn't want an electrical conductor on sweaty skin.

So what did this plant make? Vinyl chloride! No one ever mentioned it was dangerous.
Glad you made it thru day 2. I fear there are still sites in the world like that.
 
Joined
Jul 17, 2011
Messages
49
Years ago, day off CDL job delivering tanker HazMat liquids, remember being told do not adjust your pants or outer coat zipper when offloading,
it may be the last thing you ever do...
Never forgot it!
 
Joined
Dec 28, 2017
Messages
126
Yes. This car is undergoing a polymerization reaction inside the tank car. The reaction is performed in controlled reactors at a manufacturing plant where monomers are reacted into polymers. During the reaction heat, gas, and pressure are created. Due to the instability of these monomers such as vinyl chloride, styrene, butadiene, ethylene , etc they are shipped mixed with an inhibitor (chemical) until it’s use at the chemical plant. If too much time passes between the addition of the inhibitors and the actual use in polymer production, a polymerization reaction can occur, if the container holding a monomer is exposed to elevated temperatures, the inhibitors can break down allowing the polymerization reaction to occur. So bringing us back to the East Palestine derailment here : the Vinyl Chloride car(s) have been sitting an additional 4 days passed delivery date AND have been exposed to significant elevated temperatures (radiant heat from a massive fire) and have more than likely begun the polymerization reaction inside the rail car. Remember the reaction generates heat, gas, and pressure. So basically this 80 ton rail car with 5/8” thick steel shell is becoming a giant pressure cooker. Worse, if the tank car is on its side or upside down, the relief valve on the cars will not operate ( formed polymers are most often solids produced from liquid monomers so the solid polymer often clogs up a relief valve) Unlike a BLEVE where liquified gases inside a tank are heated from the outside via fire and therefore can often be cooled with master streams to prevent an explosion, the polymerization reaction is generating its own heat from within the tank as well as building up pressure from the gasses produced and the expansion produced. Sometimes a runaway Polymerization reaction will end without bursting the rail car or tank , historically there have also been polymerization reaction explosions which have blasted the tank car like a giant hand grenade. So responders will monitor the car temperature and wait the reaction out. BTW - an example of a controlled polymerization reaction is a can of foam window and crack sealant. The can contains liquid which you shake up prior to use - as you depress the button on the can top the liquid is expelled and converts to a semisolid upon contacting air and expands tremendously until it completely solidifies. Now picture that same process going on within an 80 Ton steel tank with no outlet. ! That concludes todays science class 🤣🤣🤣. Stay safe
I hate when an inhibitor goes away!
 
Joined
Apr 1, 2007
Messages
3,954
Talk about taking your life in your hands . . . you'd have to have titanium balls to approach those cars to place the shape charges. Hats off to the guys who do it.
Hadn't thought about it before. I bet they used a robot to place the charges.
 
Joined
Jun 27, 2017
Messages
989
Hadn't thought about it before. I bet they used a robot to place the charges.
Shouldn't have to do even that. There's got to be plenty of good ole boys around there with "assault rifles". Just get'em some armor piercing rounds. Like shooting tannerite without the shrapnel.
 
Joined
Jun 27, 2017
Messages
989
NS is being pretty tight-lipped on this whole fiasco, but its not a good look when their own defect detectors 20 miles from the derailment site have pics of a red-hot bearing rolling past and the crew was not instructed to stop.

View attachment 31859
Clearly the surveillance system failed. An automated system will solve this issue. Small (3-5 inch square) solar powered sensors are being developed to do this. They will use "edge" computing and computer vision taught by convolutional neural networks to decide what data to then send forward by RF.

An example would be a light sensor facing a building (or a railroad). It would be taught to send an alarm for a fire and to ignore sunlight, moonlight, street lights, and lightening. A more advanced sensor facing a street would learn to tell the difference between a person under a car changing the oil versus one stealing a catalytic convertor.
 
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Jun 27, 2007
Messages
3,334
In the old days they would have crews that would physically monitor the cars as they went past looking for just that sort of thing.
 
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