"Peter Skelton" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 13:15:39 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:


"Peter Skelton" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 09:19:06 +0100, "Keith Willshaw"
wrote:


Keithe, you snipped the relevant passage abovve, and snipped the
spot where I repeated it below in explanation. That is bloody
well not honest. Are you Brooks or Fred?


I responded to your claim that no such explosion
occurred with an excerpt from the report

No, you did not. You did exactly what I claimed you did. Go on
back and look.

(Keith knows damn well ther wasn't a fifty to vapour cloud.

From the report

"Conditions at point of rupture : 8 bar pressure, 150 degrees Celsius.
Some
40-50 tonnes of cyclohexane escaped in about one minute. There had been a
state of alert for nearly an hour, since the detection of the fire on the
8"
main, but the second and catastrophic failure proceeded rapidly.
Detonation
appears to have taken place before any alarm was raised."

That's long since been discredited. The total loss form the
process including the fire was 50 tonnes. You should know this.

Cite please - you keep claiming you have
some special knowledge of this event beyond
that of the various reports in the literature.

I suggest you present it.

Meanwhile I suggest you read the report published
in the journal of Hazardous Materials in 2000
http://hugin.aue.auc.dk/publ/hoiset2000.pdf

Quote
w x Sadee et al. 1 have made an estimation of the explosive cyclohexane-air
mixture to
be a total volume of about 400 000 m3, shaped like a banana or boomerang in
its
footprint, containing 30 tons of cyclohexane at a concentration of 2% per
volume. The
authors also pointed out that a likely source of ignition was the reformer
furnace of the
w x nearby hydrogen plant. Gugan 3 stated 36 tons as a likely cyclohexane
mass. Marshall
w x 4 also stated the hydrogen plant as a probable point of ignition.
Generally, there seems
to be an agreement with respect to the general conditions of the leakage and
the location
of ignition in most reports of the Flixborough accident.
/Quote

Perhaps you prefer the report prpeared by Anthony Joseph PhD, PE
for Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2002

Quote
The dog-leg assembly ruptured at about 4:51PM and allowed the escape of
30-50 tons of cyclohexane well above its normal boiling point. A flammable
cloud of about 14 million ft3 (about 400,000 m3) was formed from the vapor
and mist issuing from an initial jet about 600ft (about 185 m) long.
/Quote




that's the total lost in teh accident, including the fires which
lasted days.

From the report

"The feedstuff for the process was a highly combustible cyclic
hydrocarbon,
some four hundred tonnes of which would fuel the subsequent fire"

He also knows that proper valving would hav limited
the loss, there's still quite of material in the pipe, but
nothing like fifty tons and there woldn't be pressure to drive
it.

The report states otherwise


I think he's also ware that fitting a bellows at all is now
considered to be the main problem, the DuPont reports (public
domain BTW and a professional would have seen them) suggest that
a three angle loop would be much more secure.

I'm aware that fitting an incorrectly anchored bypass
was the problem, as the report states

"The bypass pipe was fixed at either end to the bellows, but the
scaffolding
was used to support the bypass pipe proved to be inadequate, and the pipe
was free to squirm when the pressure increased. "

I see you're single-sourced on this. Shall we explore the
controversy surrounding the decision not to investigate further?

D. doesn't use
bellows. His suggestion that the line fence is important compared
to distance is ludicrous, as is his suggestion that Cyane would
probably oxidize in contact with air. I doubt any chamical
engineer would not be aware that cyane and cyclohexane are the
same thing. I could continue, but that's enough on this sequence/


If you believe cyclohexane wont oxidise how do you explain
the fact that it did do so ? (hint the process is commonly called
burning).

Oxidize is your term, I did you te courtesy of using it. Cyane,
as you certainly should know, does not burn spontaneously at 150
C). It requires an ignition source. (The autoignition temperature
is 250 celcius)


I am aware of that , an ignition source for such a large release
is usually available, as it was in this case.

Keith




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