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That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

science.org

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Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#151

Post by TylerE »

autoexec wrote: post #145
protocolture wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep and I bet if I reviewed every bit of it line by line I couldnt convince many people to remove any of it. Because Regulation might not be an on/off switch but Deregulation is a complete hard no for most people.

I'd agree that deregulation is a complete hard no for most people, but that's because removing bad/watered down regulation isn't enough. Calling for "deregulation" is like saying "defund the police". A very small number of radicals claim to actually want that, but most people think that something better has to fill the void. Bad regulation needs to be replaced by good regulation. If what you mean by "Deregulation" is…

"Defund the police" was such a dumb slogan. "Demilitarize the police" would have been much better.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#152

Post by Schlagbohrer »

> "I look forward to the eventual incident report for the root causes of this one - assuming that we do such things any more here in the #$%@! Golden Age in which we find ourselves - because that, too, will make things safer going forwards. One hopes."

If there's no after action report, we'll never get a good episode of Well There's Your Problem on this incident, and that would be a loss for both engineering and podcasting ;-(

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#153

Post by pfdietz »

CalRobert wrote: post #124
KennyBlanken wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in? Because the US chemical industry has been effectively unregulated for a century and can do whatever it pleases. There's a neutralizing chemical that could have been injected to stop the exothermic reaction in its tracks. They didn't have it on site. A "response team" (likely a contractor that responds to chemical emergencies) did, but by the time they sh…

Hell, it’s still amazing there was so little fallout after Bhopal.

US government actions demonstrate the value placed on a life in another country can be much lower than the statistical value here in the US. We could save a life for a few thousand dollars with malaria nets (or so it's claimed); domestically a value of $12M per saved life is considered enough to justify some safety improvement.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#154

Post by Vaslo »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #14

> The immediate danger seems to abated, fortunately, The "it will explode leveling a couple city blocks" danger seems to be abated, but instead it's spraying an insanely toxic chemical out into the open, which will likely have health repercussions for residents for decades? Thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals don't just disappear.

Opened a small round bottom flask of this when I worked in the lab. Closed it immediately when I felt burning in my eyes as did others around me.

It’s toxic but not insanely toxic. Isocyanates, phosgene, gaseous cyanides - now those are insanely toxic

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#155

Post by wartywhoa23 »

somat wrote: post #100
devilbunny wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that it doesn’t dry out; it polymerizes, and the reaction is catalyzed by water, which is why cyanoacrylate glues will stick your fingertips together instantly but will not as rapidly stick plastics or metals together.

There are superglue(CA) accelerators sold, is that just a big scam? Because as far as I can tell a spray bottle with water works just as well.

The best CA accelerator I know is baking soda.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#156

Post by pfdietz »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #137
joxdosba wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining about the Chevy Cruze like that is hilarious . Did you go out of your way to pick up a particularly harmless example? What about all the other cars that kill significantly more people by design ? Like, I don’t know, any SUV or pickup truck? In that context, picking on the rather innocent Cruze seems a bit obtuse.

Shouldn't any design that is killing people, no matter how petty you think it is, be reason for homicide investigation against the companies executives? I guess if you viewed customers as actual people the 'the dow is 50k - why do you want us to stop war crimes?' might also get a response requiring the treatment of humans with dignity. If your executives can't kill people to make a couple of million what's the point…

No, because some killing is necessary for the economy to function. Reduction to zero means elimination of the product.

The way this statistical background of economic death is handled is by assigning a finite value to a human life. In the US it's about $12M. If you think this is inhumane, consider that this is the cutoff for government actions for reducing deaths (from traffic accidents, disease, etc.) Actions where the cost per life saved are higher than this figure mean we're leaving on the table actions that could have saved more lives for the resources spent.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#157

Post by wartywhoa23 »

whizzter wrote: post #138
somat wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are superglue(CA) accelerators sold, is that just a big scam? Because as far as I can tell a spray bottle with water works just as well.

Water but it's a bit of hit and miss that can turn soggy, better is bicarbonate that triggers are more or less instant reaction (often in baking powder in a pinch, but that's mostly a waste compared to just bicarb). Often if one wants to make something "larger", dropping superglue, adding bicarb with a silt, blowing away and dropping another layer works fairly well (it's a bit of a brittle but still quite hard mass t…

I've rebuilt my old laptop's hinges this way, building up little by little, almost 3d printing crudely by hand.

Then at some point I realized that I overdid it!

Easy-peasy, a file and sandpaper to the rescue, I thought.

Aand.. I spent x3 more time shaving off the excess than building it! It's super tough.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#158

Post by pfdietz »

tardedmeme wrote: post #141
photochemsyn wrote: post #90

Reminder that the US Chemical Safety Board does great investigations into these kinds of accidents. Here’s a famous one from 2007 involving methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (a gasoline additive) at T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville Florida. The CSB has a long record of producing great investigative videos without any partisan or legal bias, as the one shown here demonstrates: https://www.csb.gov/t2-laborato…

I thought Trump defunded them last year? It was big news at the time.

I had thought that too, but the funding was kept there by Congress.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#159

Post by pfdietz »

bayarearefugee wrote: post #17
h335ian wrote: post #9

By the miraculous grace of God, a crack allowed pressure to bleed & enabled our engine company to prevent thermal runaway. A BLEVE was the projected outcome, a firefighters worst nightmare - see the Kingman BLEVE - https://www.cityofkingman.gov/government/departments-a-h/fir...

[flagged]

That's the cool thing about the God Theory: any events can be explained by it.

Re: That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

#160

Post by stymaar »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #10
robocat wrote: post #4

Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in? After a big earthquake you don't want to have to also deal with other emergencies (à la Fukushima). Aside: One good side-effect of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake being so horrific is that it stopped the self-obsessed whinging in my city (Christchurch was still trying to recover from an earthquake).

> Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in? Because the US chemical industry has been effectively unregulated for a century and can do whatever it pleases. There's a neutralizing chemical that could have been injected to stop the exothermic reaction in its tracks. They didn't have it on site. A "response team" (likely a contractor that responds to chemical emergencies) did, but by the time they sh…

> Chemical A is found to be cancerous, so they rework it slightly, enough to call it a new chemical even though it's nearly the exact same thing, but we're right back to square one on it "not being hazardous."

That's exactly the story of Bisphenol A: once banned it just got replaced by variants of unproved (but likely even higher) toxicity.

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