You know you’ve been quarantined too long when you start binge watching chemical process safety videos... and you work in web development

I like that the CSB even thanks us for watching. How considerate.

This video from 2007 has chapters! Whoever at the USCSB is managing their account, has been doing a great job.

The good people at CSB are SO safe they wear safety glasses over their real glasses even when shooting a video. Now THAT'S safety you can believe in.

People, when you scale up your reactions, the square-cube law is not your friend

This is all sad. The case where they decided to make the acrylic polymer in one large patch instead of two small batches kind of stuck with me. I'm sure the higher ups wanted the order done over standard procedures for what ever reason. My dad used to be a safety inspecter working with chemicals. I don't remember the specifics as I was a kid, but my dad came home very angry one day saying "I ain't doing it" over and over. He later told me his company wanted to use a new process with a chemical tank. Not sure what it was, but it involved high rate vibrations. He refused, they pushed, and he said only if the company wrote up a letter saying he objected, would he allow the procedure to move forward. They stopped and never brought it up again.

Seeing that small reaction procedure bumped up to a larger vessel without taking into account surface area was just absolutely dumbfounding.

As a retired union industrial painter out of all the various jobs I was sent to, chemical, auto, refineries, manufacturing, shopping malls, etc. the one that scared me the most was. Chemical plants. Usually rusted out pipes, and valves, tanks, venting chemicals, spills. Nasty work.

The manager who made the decision to speed up production and blow the place up was promoted and given a large raise.

Oh jeez. Tonight's insomniatic adventure takes us to the TRULY early days of KZfaq...

These are fantastic videos.

I am an expedite over the road cargo van driver. I have to watch a 20 minute safety training video and pass a written 12 question exam whenever I enter a chemical plant in case an accident ever occurs while I am on plant property. It is to train me to avoid death in case an accident occurs

These videos are so incredibly useful for public education about how and why industrial accidents happen. Many thanks to CSB for making these accessible, I have learned so much from them.

Life means nothing when money runs the show........

Argh! Cubes and squares! Cubes and squares! Volume increases in cubes, surface increases in squares!

HUGE cloud of explosive gas filling a building Let's stand near by..

Bhopal is to chemical plants what Chernobyl is to nuclear power plants. Amazing that most people don't even know about it.

This channel is BOSS! I can’t stop watching.

So in the Synthron case: if you have a sealed container which is going to house an exothermic reaction which could dangerously increase pressure beyond the design limits of that container, why in the world would you not have a pressure relief valve which would vent the pressure to another overflow container? This venting could sound an alarm and the overflow container would give you time to get the reaction under control.

The guy talking at 16:40 sounds like Otacon. I don't know why, but I've been binging these videos. they're surprisingly interesting.

Evac locations should be far away from the structure and behind a barrier if there is an explosion hazard.

For once it wasn't Monsanto's fault.

Three words for MFG Chemical: Square Cube Law

I know more about industrial safety from binging these videos than probably most plant managers

9:11 this is me after i drink 2 liters of milk and eat half a kilo of cheese within the timespan of 1 hour

The first case reminds me of the chemical plant I used to work at. But they used heat exchangers in contact with the entire outside of the acrylic reactor as well as vapor condensers and did not rely on evaporation cooling alone. It also had a huge tank to catch the batch if anything goes out of control. The plant was allready 25 years old when I worked there. Guess not everyone has the same savety standards.

I'm gonna be SO safe if I ever decide to leave the house. Who knows, maybe one of these days I'll run out of educational videos.

US owned, but not when it came to paying compensation.

9:45 I think that these organizations choose to keep their employees in the dark. Because if they are educated, have more knowledge of the process and the chemistry, they'll want more pay. Corporations can't have that. So they play this game with low cost workers and a handful of better paid educated workers.

Defunding The Chemical Safety Board Is A Bad Idea And Likely To Increase Chemical DisastersUnfortunately, the 2019 budget proposed by the Trump administration zeros out funding for the USCSB. Its requested fiscal-year funding, $12 million, is modest for a government agency. Likewise, the 2018 budget also proposed to defund the USCSB. This sustained effort reflects an ongoing de-emphasis on chemical safety - as a second example, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt has indefinitely delayed bans on the use of three hazardous chemicals, shown to be toxic to human health. Chemical production is an essential component of modern society. This does not mean that there is not room to improve practices in manufacturing, storing, and shipping chemicals, and in ensuring the safety of those who work in or live near chemical plants. The vantage of an independent group is crucial for identifying those aspects that can and should be improved.

When you spend thousands of dollars on a reactor vessel you could at least calculate reactice speeds and energy released and cimpare it to the cooling power

Hello, is your reactor running? Yes! Why? Well you better go catch it!

I need to be a CBS agent. I find the hunt of the cause, well, soothing and satisfying. The main goal to investigate, then report. I take safety seriously. I'm always amazed in the workplace, how many ppl don't care.

The whole plastic one (number 2) shows the key rule of any disaster. It's usually a combination of things that lead to the problem and any single one would have prevented the deaths. They start up the plastic extruder but it's not working so hot plastic keeps pouring into the waste tank while the try to fix the extruder (1 - trying to fix the extruder while the process is running). Eventually the process is stopped but only after tank is unknowingly full (2 - No way to measure tank volume to see it was getting full). Enough plastic is in the tank so as to block the two relief tubes and pressure gauges (3 - tubes and gages are built so one problem could impact both at same time). As the plastic sits gas forms and pressure builds (4 - no pressure / rupture emergency tubing to reduce pressure when dangerous). And then the workers attempt to open the vessal (5 - no double check on releasing pressure by a secondary means for safety). Basically any disaster is a series of bad items all strung together. And while good efforts and design can reduce the odds of such items, well, it's humanity you are dealing with. So it will never be perfect.

When I was a kid I lived about 20 miles away from Morganton NC (Synthron plant). I remember the explosion shaking our home even that far away! I've never heard or felt something like that since.

These videos and this whole chanel is great, who would think that they could make these saftey videos so entertaining. A+

Many of these overpressured gas accidents could have been avoided by having a second emergency overpressure tank. Cooling should be fail safe. A gravity feed water supply should go into action should the fan and radiator fail. The overpressure tank could also be cooled with water spray but you should not rely on the water spray when sizing the tank. An overpressure tank of 1/2 size of the production tank would almost double the size for gas should a failure of the production tank half full. That should half the pressure in the tanks. If you overfill the production tank to say 3/4 full then the same overpressure tank increases the size tanks gas size by 3 and cuts the pressure by 1/3. Any cooling you provide to the emergency tank will help you maintain control. Filling a tank with a liquid that becomes solid like in the nylon example should have been built to fail in some way long before any high pressure could develop. Some kind of alarm should have gone off halting production before that tank could fill beyond a certain level.

9:54 "Or (not) communicated to workers" Sounds like a City of Los Angeles operation.

The third instance shows that if a compound was made in a smaller reactor, the compound would not have escaped into the air and the whole thing should have been scaled up properly.

9:10 when you bite into a microwaved jawbreaker

These videos are very well done.

It's 11pm. Why am I watching CSB videos endlessly. What is the meaning of life?

This time I want you to do the entire process in one step. I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong???

I think I watched every video from the CSB and I don't even know how I got into it.

I hope these videos are done in a higher resolution. Still love them.

I have amnesia, so when I mix hazardous chemicals, I follow my written instructions. I make small changes based on previous analysis (80+ readings of pH, etc). Always be safe!

not sure why one would start off running a full batch when starting full scale production. i would think that you would start with smaller batches and work your way up to confirm or validate the design and that there was sufficient cooling for regular and abnormal conditions.

I feel for the loved ones for this and the other tragedies. But these are so informative.

13:00 Do chemical engineers not have to take thermodynamics or heat transfer? Seriously how hard would it have been to do the calculation of heat being produced vs heat transfer ability of your cooling system, then leave a fat margin of safety if the byproduct of its failure is so dangerous. ..maybe my lack of education in chemistry, but if you knew the rate the reaction produced heat this was an extremely easy to avoid.

Very good for safety training to prevent industrial accidents

My main takeaway from USCSB videos is that cooperate greed rules the roost.

I always love these videos.

The violence of the second case likely resulted it body parts being ripped off the victims. I couldn't even imagine going out like that.

Serious question here - are the people in charge of these plants chemists? Many of these accidents seem to result from a lack of understanding of chemistry and/or chemical engineering. Where are the chemists overseeing these processes?

TankQ so much for showing these films. If it saves lives, that's what matters... DRC. ;)

11:50 in the case of mfg it s amazing that a (graduate) chemical manager or even a bachelored technician haven’t noticed differences in the reaction and thermal disposal capacity of the heat exchanger . Its like a mechanic who puts plain water into a car radiator: either he’s suddenly foolish or totally in bad faith.

I do chemical water treatment for all kinds of industry and had a plastic manufacturer up in PA that utilized extruders and TCUs, etc. Had a lot to test and treat there and the molten plastic was pretty cool looking when it popped out. That whole place was covered in white dust from the conveyor belts. So annoying. There's a lot of crazy shit going on out there if you're in that industrial world. Always something new to see.

Absolutely can't wait for the USCSB video on the train accident

safety 1st 1st 1st quality 2nd production3rd BE SAFE IF YOU DONT IT SAFELY DONT DO IT ALL

How did the first case not have an over pressure vent to atmosphere? A pressure vessel with no safely relief valve?

My grandfather was an element of production hardware in 1935 and would loved to have seen this video.

The thumbnail is everything.

I love you'r videos so much ❤️

The knowledge that scaling exothermic reactions up makes things worse should be obvious to anyone who has seen a big compost pile. Surface area to volume ratio will always get you if you're unaware of it.

Instead of two smaller batches let's run production in one big batch. Shouldn't there be a maximum single batch size regardless of the production order??

_Enthalpy is an extensive property. This means that, for homogeneous systems, the enthalpy is proportional to the size of the system._ Jesus Christ you learn that the first year of chemistry. Did these guys fail their stoichiometry classes?

I believe that as long as incompetence, carelessness and ignorance and their consequences continue to be seen as 'accidents' by industry they will enviably keep happening. They are the enviable result of a fundamental lack of knowledge.

These videos are gold,,I wonder if they're still this on it,I hope so

A very intresting video

I'm not going to lie, I glanced at the thumbnail and thought it was a CGI picture of spaghetti coming out of a pasta extruder. Great video nonetheless. 😀

I can only imagine how many training centers charge to watch these videos on this channel

Many people see “reactor”,and immediately think of radioactivity…

I'm not an engineer but I can tell you two things about a chemical reaction and hot chemicals; you need to size your radiator properly, and you gotta have a relief pipe or it's going to blow.

you guys ever just watch this because youre bored

Oh this is the one that they never maintenanced the piping and tanks. They cut employees and they cut any maintaining. It was unstoppable with human greed. Well the union carbine one

The thumbnail looks like the entire universe has suffered a complete nuclear explosion.

I blame engineers with the pressure of upper management to increase productivity, but have no relative experience in controlling the reactions. The operators who as I found working in both refineries and chemical plants for years almost own the equipment themselves. They’re responsible for it’s production, it’s integrity, and everyone’s safety around it. Listen to experienced operators who have been around for 10 years or more. They know their unit.

Yes finally. The human aspect of all these accidents is unfathomably overlooked most of the time. Must be just a nightmare to go through... these poor people. They're just considered expendable by the POS higher ups.

If the CSB has a video on you, it wasn’t because you did a good job.

Even I know that what I mix in a tiny bowl won't be the same in a giant pot!!!!! And Im not even a chemistry student!!!!!

I know this is about accidents the csb investigated, but Chernobyl also falls into this category. Kinda

Death by hot plastic ! My God ! That's going on my top 10 horrible ways to die list, after Zombie horde and Nazi gas chamber.

They should have had the Emergency Cooling Water system controls located outside the building as well, so if the building is compromised, it could still be activated.

What the hell is wrong with questioning one's existence? Or being boring, for that matter?

Why am I binge watching these...

So, 1st shift jammed the container, and told 3rd shift to clean it - knowing it was a pressurized bomb!?

11:07 that "time" sound reminded me to GTA for some reason, even though I dont play GTA

Executives should be held legally and criminally liable for activities in their facilities. If your held them responsible there would be more emphasis on safety and oversight on proposed activities

Does the CSB get bored between incidents and start placing bets on which industrial facility will blow up next?

In the first instance, the compound should have been made the way it was meant to be, adding the material in small batches.

When the boiler in your house has better fail safes you know they were incompetent

What could have been done to prevent the first incident from happening, why was an order placed for a compound that was significantly larger than the standard size of the batch, couldn’t they have made two batches of the compound at 6% strength and mixed them together?

Bhopal was nearly half owned by the Indian government, stop leaving that out. Yes, they had a 49 percent stake in Union Carbide India, the company licensed to produce Union Carbide products in India.

Sad that accidents create change not before a death happens

This is the equivalent of dumping all the hardener in a gallon of bondo in one shot. Let's just say very exothermic.

Was Bhopal really that long ago?

If the world had not heard of this, do you think those CEOs would have changed their M.O.?

I can't be the only one to click because of what looked like an explosive case of diarrhea.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the point you're trying to make is that people should act rather than sit around thinking about how to act. If so, then I agree. However, there's nothing wrong with taking some time to sit down and think about things. In fact, it's healthy. You start to look at things in new ways, solving problems and such. Sometimes the best way to do that is to look at things in an absurd way. ("Do I really exist?")

So basically the Synthron Acrylic Polymer Manufacturing accident was kinda similar to the already investigated T2 Laboratories accident in that there were runaway chemical reactions in both cases that caused the pressure vessels to explode, except the Synthron accident was on a slightly smaller scale, interesting.