Issue Date: July 11, 2016 Web Date: July 7, 2016
University of Hawaii lab explosion likely originated in electrostatic discharge
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An electrostatic discharge between postdoctoral researcher Thea Ekins-Coward and a gas storage tank containing hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide likely caused an explosion at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, in which Ekins-Coward lost one of her arms, according to a report by the University of California Center for Laboratory Safety (UCCLS).
UH hired UCCLS to conduct an independent investigation of the March 16 accident and released the report on July 1. Another investigation by the Honolulu Fire Department, released in April, concluded that the cause was a spark from the pressure gauge. UCCLS dug deeper than the fire department and contracted with an outside laboratory to recreate and test the experimental setup. Those tests ruled out all causes other than a static discharge.
Safety recommendations for working with explosive gas mixtures:
▸ Calculate the potential explosive force to determine level of protection
▸ Compose detailed and thorough standard operating procedures
▸ Conduct specialized training on highly explosive materials
▸ Use well-designed, hazard-rated equipment (intrinsically safe as a minimum rating)
▸ Electrically ground and bond equipment
▸ Use blast barriers
▸ Use engineering controls for highly explosive materials
▸ Use work practice controls to limit access
▸ Conduct outside review of procedures, equipment, and engineering controls
Source: UCCLS, “Report to the University of Hawaii at Manoa on the Hydrogen/Oxygen Explosion of March 16, 2016,” part 2
Going beyond the immediate cause of the explosion, however, “the overall underlying cause of the accident was failure to recognize and control the hazards of an explosive gas mixture of hydrogen and oxygen,” the UCCLS report says.
“The message to other researchers is that they need to do a better job of educating themselves about the hazards of the materials they’re working with” and what could go wrong, says Craig A. Merlic, UCCLS executive director and a chemistry professor at UCLA. And campus safety personnel “need to have conversations with researchers and guide them to the resources that are available” to help conduct experiments safely, he adds.
In the case of the UH explosion, for example, the lab passed a safety inspection in January in part by properly storing H2 and O2 cylinders 6 meters apart. But no one questioned storing a mixture of the gases in a 49-L steel tank designed for compressed air and not electrically grounded, the UCCLS report says. When the tank exploded, it contained 55% H2, 38% O2, and 7% CO2 at a pressure of 8 atm. UCCLS estimated the energy of the detonation to be equivalent to 70.5 g of TNT.
Ekins-Coward was working for the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute under researcher Jian Yu. The gas mixture was used to feed bacteria to produce biofuels and bioplastics. Yu’s lab is still closed, and he and the institute have not yet determined how experiments will be set up going forward, says institute director Richard E. Rocheleau.
The explosion cost about $716,000 in infrastructure damage and $60,000 to $100,000 in equipment losses, and UCCLS was paid $88,000, says UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl.
UH placed no restrictions on the UCCLS team during its investigation, Merlic says. The Hawaii Occupational Safety & Health Division is also examining the incident.
- Chemical & Engineering News
- ISSN 0009-2347
- Copyright © American Chemical Society
http://cenblog.org/the-safety-zone/2016/07/gas-cylinder-storage-at-the-university-of-hawaii/
Maintaining equipotential between people and explosive materials/mixtures is a consideration for our Labs.
An area we did not pursue was the possibility of the researcher sitting on the chair that was violently damaged. We were not able to question her on the events leading up to the incident. Could she have created a high charge as she slid over to turn the tank pressure gauge off? The damage to the chair and other visual clues would suggest that this happened
Two (or three) mass flow controllers and a mixing valve would have done a much better and safer job of feeding a gas mixture to the bacteria. But even then, I would be worried about creating an explosive gas mixture in the headspace of the fermentor or incubator.
It is all very easy to write this, and wring our hands afterwards. But I have a question. I started hands-on organic chemistry at college just over 40 years ago, before MSDS, right-to-know, safety review committees and lab inspections existed. We handled all the reagents that are handled in labs now (and some that no longer are), many in glass bottles without safety boots, etc. Yes, I had some near misses. I cleaned up afterwards and learned my lesson. My question is - how did we manage to stay safe without all the current safety procedures?
I don't have a good answer - although obviously we managed somehow. The best I can come up with is that we "assumed everything was dangerous", unless we definitely knew otherwise, and acted accordingly. And I know we also looked out for each other, and generally knew what the folks around us were doing, and would ask questions if we thought something was odd or dangerous. Ore we would just ask how to do something if we hadn't done it before - like fill a reaction flask with liquid ammonia out of a tank, fill a hydrogenator, initiate a Grignard, etc. No safety classes, no committees, no "conversations to guide people to resources", no paperwork - just what we used to call common sense, and paying attention.
I have a further answer. We all (yes - all of us) had made gunpowder and guncotton, stuck spatula tips of inorganic salts into Bunsen burner flames to see the colours, dropped a bit of sodium into a beaker of water, taken a bit of white phosphorus out of the water it was stored in, dissolved coins in conc HNO3 to extract the silver, ran water electrolysis collecting the hydrogen in a Coke bottle and igniting it, and dropping a bit of burning magnesium in the jar that had the oxygen in it, etc etc . In high school. Things that would literally get a person arrested today.
And we learned that things could be dangerous.
The emphasis on safety has resulted in the American workplace - labs included - getting less and less hazardous since the advent of OSHA in 1970 and the subsequent RTK regulations.
Your point about the social aspects isa ggod one, and is what I was trying to articulate from a positive aspect. We managed to stay safe all those years ago by having a cooperative, rather than competitive or "too busy to worry about anyone else" social environment. This was because we all had a sense of what was dangerous, and we had all learned that from the experiences I mentioned.
To use continuous mixing devices is a laboratory standard which should have known to a postdoctoral researcher, regardless of what basic training he or she had bevor.
To control the mixing rate a simple GC is available.
To use continuous mixing devices is a laboratory standard which should have known to a postdoctoral researcher, regardless of what basic training he or she had bevor.
To control the mixing rate a simple GC is available.
There is not necessarily a need for a spark to set off a reaction. Catalysts can also initiate a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen and was demonstrated by Doebereiner in the 19th century. As pointed out already repeatedly, mixing of large amounts of hydrogen and oxygen in a tank, particularly at elevated pressure, is inconceivable and should have never been done.
Static discharge in lab is very dangerous especially if we handle H2 and O2
Remember if you've had a near miss in your past that means luck was the only barrier keeping you from being in this person's shoes. We can all agree luck is no barrier at all.
This tragedy was caused by criminal negligence or more likely recklessness (which is a more serious crime than negligence)
The definition of negligence follows the reasonable person standard:
"A failure to behave with the level of care that someone of ordinary prudence would have exercised under the same circumstances."
Would have a person of ordinary prudence have mixed a large quantity of an oxidizer and a highly flammable gas in a pressurized vessel?
The answer is clearly no. Any kid that has witnessed the explosion of soap bubbles filled with H2+O2 can attest to that.
That would be an interesting experiment. go to the next high school and ask random kids "hey you, is it safe to mix hydrogen and oxygen in a steel tank?". I bet that most kids would say no.
But these people were not kids, they were trained scientists with phds. They could reasonably have foreseen what would happen.
Therefore this explosion goes beyond criminal negligence. Clearly the people involved had foreseen the possibility and consciously taken the risk. After they had a close call, there is no way to claim that they were not aware of the risk. This is not criminal negligence anymore, this is reckless behavior.
I fear that we are going to continue seeing deadly accidents in university labs
- no safety culture
- sub-standard labs crammed full of equipment
- high turnaround
- can-do attitude, work is too important for safety
- cutthroat competition, PIs that care for safety don't make it far
- untrained personnel
- no proper supervision
- get out of jail cards for people like Patrick Harran, who called the 23 year old student who burned to death in his lab an experienced researcher doing independent research (or something along the same lines). I bet if she had found a cure for cancer, he would have called her "one of my students, working under very close personnel supervision".
- one person groups that don't have any expertise outside of an extremely narrow field. Industrial chemists can rely on a whole team of experts, but in academia, it is every man for himself.
Pre-mixing hydrogen and oxygen is so insane, it defies common sense.
I think this guy was the PI, someone with the name of Jian Yu is named in the lawsuit, and his bio matches pretty well:
"Jian Yu (PhD, Chemical Engineering, University of British Columbia, 1991), has over 24 years of experience in bio-based plastics, chemicals and fuels with an emphasis in chemical, biochemical and microbial conversion of renewable feedstock (e.g. agricultural residues, domestic wastes, and CO2/H2). Following his 3-year postdoctoral training in industry and academia, Dr. Yu spent 7 years at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and developed his teaching and research in biochemical and environmental engineering. Dr. Yu joined the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2001 and participated in teaching and research in multiple programs including Marine Bioproducts Engineering, Ocean and Renewable Resource Engineering, and Molecular Bioscience and Bioengineering. With funding from the US Department of Energy, the Office of Naval Research, and private companies, he has developed active programs in bioplastics and biofuels. His current projects include: high grade drop-in liquid fuel from biomass syngas, a green refinery of CO2 and solar energy, and bioplastics from food processing wastes and lignocellulosic biomass."
(http://www.hnei.hawaii.edu/staff/jian-yu)
PhD in chemical engineering and experience with CO/H2, syngas and biofules, but doesn't know that H2 and O2 don't mix.
A simple gas proportioner would have been all that was needed to make this experiment safe.
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