OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14459945
SAFETY RELIEF VALVE,PRESSURE VESSEL,EQUIPMENT FAILURE,EXPLOSION,HIGH PRESSURE,PRESSURE RELEASE
Event description
Gas sterilizer vessel explodes during test
Investigation abstract
A 54 1/2 in. wide by 7 ft high by 13 ft 5 3/8 in. long gas sterilizer vessel was by 60 3/4 in. wide by 90 in. long door to the vessel completely separated from it and was blown 22 ft 7 in. , creating large holes in a wood frame partition wa ll and an 8 in. concrete block wall. The safety relief valve, with 15 psi capaci ty of 95 cfm (cubic feet per minute), did not open to relieve the pressure. Ther e were no reported injuries. being pressurized with compressed air when it exploded. The vessel was designed and manufactured to operate at 15 psi, whereas the controls and valves were des igned to operate at 6 psi. The employer was experiencing a problem with the time cycle and was running a test at the time of the explosion. The vessel was usual ly pressurized with ethylene oxide gas to 6 psi. For test purposes, they were us ing compressed air with the regulator set at 60 psi. The controls on the vessel did not function, thereby permitting the vessel to pressurize more than 6 psi. T here were no employees in the room when the vessel exploded. The 7 1/4 in. thick
Victim
-
#981 Degree 0 Age 0
- Nature of injury
- 0
- Part of body
- 0
- Event type
- 0
- Source
- 0
- Occupation code
- 0
- Human factor
- 0
- Environmental factor
- 0
- Task assigned
- 0
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.