12 ms·
I believe they tried to inject some chemicals to slow the reaction, but the pump and/or valves failed and clogged.
by dan_sbl 4mo ago
I believe they tried to inject some chemicals to slow the reaction, but the pump and/or valves failed and clogged.
- robocat 4mo agoThat is active. Something passive could be submerging the tank in a pool of water (also good for proving spill containment won't leak).
- colechristensen 4mo agoUh, you can't just disconnect a pressurized 35,000 gallon tank and drop it into a an enormous pool you just keep full under it at all times.
- robocat 4mo agoRiiight. That is exactly what I was thinking.
- colechristensen 4mo agoIt's really unclear what you were thinking
- bagels 4mo agoI think the passive version is the tank stays in a pool all the time.
- cyberax 4mo agoTypically you don't have enough surface area for that. The walls are thick enough that thermal conductivity into an ambient-temperature liquid alone is not going to be sufficient.
- kenhwang 4mo agoI was thinking maybe have those chemicals sitting in a glass or temperature sensitive container inside the tank. So when there's too much pressure or heat, the container containing the neutralizing chemical is broken like a fuse and the chemical is automatically released.
- coryrc 4mo agoHaving the chemical in one location doesn't make it active all over, you need to disperse it. Like you need to shake glow-in-the-dark bracelets.
- thinking_cactus 4mo agoWell then... make a matrix of such fuse-containers? (say every 20cm or whatever) I guess manufacturing such a matrix would be pretty expensive though, you'd need to carefully automate its production I think. It would also definitely interfere with flow of fluid in the tank.
- tardedmeme 4mo agoEasy to imagine protective mechanisms in hindsight, now imagine you have to build a system for every tank of every chemical in the world
- robocat 4mo agoI am imagining some sort of regulations that enforce the creation and installation of appropriate safety systems upon all similar sites in the affected jurisdiction. And a standard to prevent similar danger elsewhere in the world. Or is that too fantastic? Perhaps I should stick with the distopian fiction I so love. Why haven't flying cars taken off yet?
- kenhwang 4mo agoI was thinking multiple long skinny tubes with etchings that make them more likely to split lengthwise. Maybe with a spring loaded/powered agitator so when the tube breaks there's some mechanical flinging/mixing of the inner chemical. But I'm not a chemical processes engineer, so I don't know how much mixing is needed. But the existing emergency plan was to inject the the chemical through a single valve, so it seems like the dispersion and mixing requirements in this case seems to be low.