suburban cowboy said:

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I have confirmed this happened during butane injection. Pump failed causing butane to vaporize and starting the fire.

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oxygen?

Towns03 said:

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suburban cowboy said:

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I have confirmed this happened during butane injection. Pump failed causing butane to vaporize and starting the fire.

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oxygen?

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Do what?

Do you know any more details about the system by which ITC injects butane?

K Bo said:

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Do you know any more details about the system by which ITC injects butane?

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I don't know for certain but I will make the assumption that it's directly from truck/railcar/barge thru pipeline into the tank. Otherwise, if they stored it onsite in a vessel with greater than 10,000 lbs it would be a Process Safety Management (PSM) covered process and trigger both PSM/RMP.

Yeah, I was more wondering if it was injected through eductors, jets, a dedicated tank circulation system, etc and what pump it might have been that failed during butane injection that would cause ignition.

suburban cowboy said:

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K Bo said:

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Do you know any more details about the system by which ITC injects butane?

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I don't know for certain but I will make the assumption that it's directly from truck/railcar/barge thru pipeline into the tank. Otherwise, if they stored it onsite in a vessel with greater than 10,000 lbs it would be a Process Safety Management (PSM) covered process and trigger both PSM/RMP.

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I would imagine it still falls under PSM/RMP.

IIRC the vessel must be able to be attached to a mode of transportation (ie railcar or tanker truck) in order to avoid RMP regulation. These tanks don't meet that criteria so I would think they would fall under at least RMP regulation and most likely PSM regulation.

No I can tell you 100% this was not a PSM or RMP covered process.

That's interesting.

I don't know enough about PSM requirements, but I would've bet a lot of money that was an RMP facility.

RMP is based on Threshold Quantity (TQ) of a certain chemical. So yes, they have PSM/RMP covered process onsite, but blending butane into naphtha (because of the process they use to do it ) is not one of them. Looks like they have VAM and 5-6 other RMP covered procceses though. I'd guess that's what's stored in those spheres, minus the VAM.

But other than a big plume of smoke and maybe some soot, what off-site impacts has this had, if any? An RMP covered chemical would kill and/or harm thousands of people both immediately and over time. If this is the cost of doing business and it happens once every 25-30 years I'm personally okay with that.

Social Media Influencer said:

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Ducks4brkfast said:

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A lady out here in Fulshear mentioned on Next Door she had planned all day backyard gardening activities that she's since had to cancel because of the smoke.

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Ok, this has all been a fun academic discussion up till now. But now it's getting personal, and I think we should all take a moment to realize how serious this is.

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having foam systems on the tanks seems like a no brainer, but if this tank farm has been around for some time it doesn't surprise me at all that nothing has been retrofitted. even the majors don't automatically jump to this conclusion, major retrofits can be debated for years and years (ALARP principle). this always happens until a major incident comes around like this to change the thinking.

also, i would expect a CSB investigation on this one, given the size and duration of the event

ITC's slogan:

every
action
counts

Word on the street is that Ed Emmets daughter has begun confiscating all the bleach from Friendswood and is attempting to air drop it on the fire.

One of my uncles worked at a small refinery in Oklahoma years ago. They had a tank fire. Local vfd decided to try and spray water on it. It was so hot that all the water immediately turned to steam. My uncle said it turned into a big mess.

My guess is that when it was one tank they decided to let it burn out(pretty common from what I've seen). Now that it has spread to six or more tanks they probably would have done things differently had they known what was going to happen.

Foam began to turn to steam in this situation as well.

txags92 said:

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Ferris Wheel Allstar said:

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ITC's slogan:

every
action
counts
against
the
bottom
line

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FIF them...

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I'm not going to try and act like I know anything about ITC's safety or business practices, but my experience has been that most of these companies and refineries treat safety with the utmost importance. I'm sure there are some that just talk the talk, but most walk the talk.

not sure if you are ********** (**********=pro union) or non union

nonameag99 said:

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not sure if you are ********** (**********=pro union) or non union

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Absolutely anti-union. I had to work with those mother f ers in Michigan for almost 2 years, and you couldn't pay me to hire a union crew. My comments about contractors relative to DuPont wasn't to insinuate that contractors are somehow bad to have on the plant. It is just that for DuPont, contractors were a way to 1) reduced "fixed costs" by transitioning work to a contractor who is considered a "flexible cost", even though the contractor is there doing the same job for the same number of hours as the employee was and the plant can't be safely operated without them; and 2) a way for them to put the risky jobs outside of the "employee" pool to lower the chance that they won't get their safety incentive bonus.

Well it looks much worse this morning coming in from the west side, but maybe that is due to wind changes? Any updates?

Is "ah, f*** it, let's just let em burn and see what happens, don't want to cause a scare anyoone or spend too much money" really a legit disaster response strategy in this industry?

It's a smoke plume that's 500+ ft in the air. What's the big deal?

I know it doesn't seem like it because all we see are the elected officials standing behind the podium and they're morons, but from my experience with the industry I would venture to say there are some smart, top notch people working this thing on the ground.

And I can guarantee it's not "ah. f*** it let it burn and see what happens"