In 10 Years At Least 17 Explosions Of Tanks Holding Asphalt/Fuel Oil - New Additives May Play Role

[hatrack]

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Over the last decade, at least 17 heated storage tanks containing asphalt or No. 6 fuel oil, another heavy oil, have exploded at asphalt plants or terminals around the United States, according to news reports and filings from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. In some cases workers were injured or killed, and some explosions ignited fires in other, nearby tanks, causing whole neighborhoods to be evacuated. More such explosions have probably gone unreported, said Kirsten Rosselot, a chemical engineer and the owner of Process Profiles, an environmental consulting firm, who has studied this type of tank.

Neither OSHA nor the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, an independent federal agency charged with looking into industrial chemical accidents, has conducted a systematic investigation of these explosions. Yet there is reason to believe that changes in the way asphalt and No. 6 fuel oil are processed and stored may be contributing to them, and that workers—and residents who live near the tanks—may be at risk.

For decades, companies and regulators assumed that emissions from asphalt and No. 6 fuel oil were negligible because of the heavy nature of the products. But over the last 30 years, companies have increasingly used additives to enhance the products, changing their makeup. Those additives have increased the vapor pressure inside the tanks making them more vulnerable to explosion, Rosselot and others said.

As a recent investigation by Inside Climate News showed, those increased emissions are going largely unreported by companies. In some states, regulators do not require reporting, based on an incorrect assumption that there are no emissions to report. In states that do require that emissions be reported, companies estimate them, typically using a formula developed by the petroleum industry that is often wrong and leads to underestimates of vapor pressure and the levels of air pollution the tanks are emitting.

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/06062021/tank-explosion-asphalt-heavy-fuel-texas/

[luvs2sing]

1. I grew up within two miles from an asphalt plant..

with a Pure Oil refinery right next door to it. I still remember the day the asphalt plant caught fire when I was in first grade. Scary stuff!