Oil refinery explosion

[Tortuga]

There was a large explosion at an oil refinery in Philly this morning. Pretty impressive video.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/giant-explosion-rocks-largest-refinery-complex-on-the-east-coast-sends-gasoline-prices-higher.html

 

The report said it was a butane/propane mix so my guess is they blew a pump seal on a depropanizer. 

[Tortuga]

It was in their Alky unit, which unfortunately uses Hydrofluoric acid. 

 

Fortunately there wasn't an acid release. 

 

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-refinery-fire-explosion-cause-20190622.html

[tekmantwo]

Interesting article. I am glad nobody got seriously hurt or killed.

 

I watched a bunch of the explosion videos, that was a pretty big blast..

 

In one of the vids the camera was zoomed in too tight and I wasn't able to follow the flight path of some of the debris, what looked like a fairly large tank of some kind went out of the field of view and probably flew quite far...

 

I am curious about how far away they will find stuff.

[Tortuga]

12 minutes ago, tekmantwo said:

 

I am curious about how far away they will find stuff.

We had a large butane sphere for butane storage and it was estimated that if it bleed out, vaporized and found an ignition source, the shock wave would flatten everything for 2 miles...

 

Oh, it was also in the flight path of a small airport located next to the refinery so we were always worried about low flying private planes...

Edited June 23, 2019 by Tortuga

[tekmantwo]

2 minutes ago, Tortuga said:

found an ignition source

That wouldn't be too hard to find. Pity the fool smoking on the job..

[Tortuga]

2 minutes ago, tekmantwo said:

That wouldn't be too hard to find. Pity the fool smoking on the job..

All it would take is one fired heater. Lots of them in a refinery....

[Tortuga]

The Alky unit takes cracked iso butane from the Cat (FCCU) and converts it to alkylate, a high octane gasoline blending component. It's hard to blend gasoline without the alky....