contaminated gas, more good news!

[al]

http://www.acr-news.com/news/news.asp?id=2631&title=Contaminated+refrigerant+is+suspected+in+reefer+explosions+

3 people dead, what the feck is it contaminated with??

al

[stufus]

Probably some napalm the yank's left behind;)
But seriously three death's I hope the relevant authorities are all over this one and someone is held accountable ,this job is bad enough without wondering if someone else's mistake could cause you your life.
Cheers

Stu

[al]

makes you wonder what we put in systems at times, maersk have "grounded" 800 boxes, one issue for us is that this delays shipments so i doubt if the grounding will last long.

al

[paul_h]

Wow, that's terrible.
So did they all explode when being serviced? Or did some just blow up randomly? Says the last death was an engineer servicing it, I wonder what the other causes were.
It may be that the equipment had a leak, the dodgey repairers in Vietnam were using HCs and gassing them up, and the deaths were people who were sent to the units after short of refrigerant again, and were brazing up a leak they found or a faulty component...

If that's the case, then if you work on equipment that came from unknown regions or service history, do what is best practice, reclaim until a total vacuum, purge through with nitrogen (which we should all be doing anyway...)

[al]

Paul

Having worked with these units in theory that is fine but in practice when the box is on the quay about to be loaded?? i agree proper practice would stop these accidents but it could be a HC being added as you say.

al

[Grizzly]

Interesting stuff, thanks Al.
I would add to your rep but it appears I have to spread the love around a bit first.
Thanks all the same.
Grizzly

[al]

Gotta spread the love Grizz!! Thanks, it's led to a backlog in the states of empty containers.

al

[stufus]

http://www.refrigeration-engineer.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=8271&d=1320541078
Here's one of the exploding unit's
Good post about it in transport section "all reefer containers"
Cheers
Stu

[chemi-cool]

Compressor explosion caused 99% from sucking pure Oxygen.
Any other substance is highly unlikely to cause such an explosion.

But...............there is always a first time....

[adacus1]

Refrigerant was a counterfeit containing R40 (Chloromethane). Carrier, Thermoking, Daikin and Starcool have all issued bulletins about these refrigerants as well as Cambridge Research and GEA Bock. R40 is highly reactive with any aluminum inside the unit and the by products of this reaction are worse, pyrophoric, toxic and/or flammable.

[monkey spanners]

The R40 make trimethyl aluminium which explodes in contact with air, its what i was gibberin on about the other day.

[adacus1]

If you want a full list of published information the Container Owners Association has published a complete list of bulletins at http://www.containerownersassociation.org/

[desA]

I see that the gas bottle is still attached to the rig (lower rhs). Any idea of the operational sequence leading to this explosion?

[mbc]

we had also in Iran in last 3 years 3 people died.
the reason of that they used Chinese made R-22 .

I have my own experience 2 years ago.
my client called me and asked for help , I went there to repair system and I saw system is over heat and pressure when I asked what he done it he told me his repairman just charged a little gas because of short gas
( they bought new 2 balloons gas from shop).
I heard before about explosion happened , I measured balloon temperature and Gage pressure and checked with diagrams and find it not right .So I recovered all gas and I put new gas R-22 and every thing come to normal
when I called to supplier first he denied then he accept and asked me to return those gas and refused ( I thought might he sell it again ) and I told my customs do not pay for those gas .

also we have Indian gas in our market it contained a lot of moisture.

[duiker]

see for possible cause; http://www.westpandi.com/Documents/News/111207%20Guide%20to%20Flame%20Testing%20R-134a%20for%20Chlorine%20Contamination.pdf

[maire]

There are many accidents happened due to leakage of gas. The only person responsible for this is the authority. The strict action is required to take against the culprit. This is the only way to reduce the number of such accidents.