University of Hawaii lab explosion likely originated in electrostatic discharge

Is earthing always the best approach to preventing explosions due to electrostatic discharge?
Maintaining equipotential between people and explosive materials/mixtures is a consideration for our Labs.

Lack of basic erudition in academia is evident: every 5th grader heard about Hindenburg explosion and hydrogen-oxygen mixture tendency to form water explosively upon a slightest provocation. In GC lab setting we are instructed to keep hydrogen and oxygen tanks 20ft apart in isolated cabinets. So how did it occur that a post doc and professor did not mind mixing hydrogen and oxygen in large quantities? Who come up with the brilliant experiment?

It is very unlikely that there was ever a spark inside the tank; ignition most likely occurred downstream of the tank outlet and the flame front traveled back into the tank. Which raises The question: why would anyone EVER put a mixture of fuel and oxidant in the same vessel? (Unless of course they were TRYING to build a bomb.)

I work with explosives as my daily job - I went way beyond a little home-made gunpowder. Hindsight notwithstanding, the "cause" might have been politics and competitive pressure, or inexperience and over-confidence. The researcher is lucky to have lived through the event at all. 70g TNT equivalency is enough bang to embosss steel into gravel like boiled lettuce. The "cause" of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is pretty well-known: political pressure pushing the engineers and data to the side. My neighbor in Hunstville, Alabama was one of Von Braun's team from Peenemunde, and the O-Ring failure was not a "surprise". It was politics and money that did it. So in spite of all the increased paperwork today, don't discount the social aspects.

I only can affirm David Dodd. Unless you never have done yourself all of those funny experiments with explosives (of course with small amounts and proper safety measurements), you do not have the right feeling of what it can do, if using bigger amounts of chemicals. Absolutely crazy to store a mixture of an almost perfect 2:1 mixture of Hydrogen : Oxygen in a vessel and at a pressure of some 8 atm in such an amount, and this inside a lab. As a teacher of Chemistry I used to demonstrate the detonating gas by igniting the above gas mixture in a small glass bottle. Even worse are mixtures of Oxygen with Methane ore other Hydrocarbons like Propane or Ethin.
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.

A. F. Webb raised a very valid point. The steel cylinder should act as a Faraday Cage and an electrostatic discharge could not have occurred inside the tank.
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.

Hi Vijay

Static discharge in lab is very dangerous especially if we handle H2 and O2

This tragedy was not caused by a spark from the pressure gauge. Neither was it caused by static electricity.

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.