Sulfuric Acid into Hydrochloric Acid tank (Unloading Incident)

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Details: Parent Category: Safety Info Posts; Category: Hazardous Materials; Published: 21 February 2015

Over the years I have posted several articles about hazardous materials being unloaded to the wrong tank. And it seems that each time I do I get several e-mails stating how rare these events are and that I am being an alarmist. So I thought I would post a section of a PHMSA Investigation Report from an incident where Sulfuric Acid was unloaded into a tank with Hydrochloric Acid. The host facility knew what was in the tank; however, they did not inform the driver of the tank contents. The acid tank was NOT labeled and things go downhill from there. Count the number of failures from this listing of the events leading up to the gas release...

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Comments

#1 Randy Brown 2015-02-23 01:02

Excellent example of what can happen when two incompatible chemicals are mixed. There was another incident that took place in Holly Hills Florida last month. The drive put bleach into acid tanks. At last report the driver was in critical condition in a local burn unit from internal burns. Earlier this month there was an event in Spain where ferric chloride was mixed with nitric acid. A large red cloud was produced and many people were evacuated. This is not a rare occurrence. KemKey Safety Couplings were designed to help prevent just this type of accident. Please give it a look at www.kemkey.com if you have a minute. Thanks

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