Animation of April 26, 2018, Explosion and Fire at the Husky Energy Refinery in Superior, Wisconsin

[Music] April 26th 2018 the Huskies superior refinery in superior Wisconsin at 5:40 a.m. operators took steps to shut down the refineries fluid catalytic cracker or FCC unit for periodic maintenance and inspection the FCC unit uses heat and a solid catalyst to break or crack heavy hydrocarbons from crude oil into smaller hydrocarbons which can then be blended into gasoline and other products slide valves control the flow of catalyst between a reactor which contains flammable hydrocarbons and a regenerator which contains air it is important to prevent mixing the hydrocarbons and air since if they mix a dangerous explosion can occur to avoid this hazard the slide valves maintain a catalyst level between the reactor and regenerator which acts as a barrier to initiate the shutdown of the FCC unit refinery workers stop the flow of hydrocarbons to the unit and closed the to slide valves connecting the reactor to the regenerator but unknown to the workers one of those slide valves was eroded and even though it closed it could not maintain a catalyst barrier in the reactor as a result the catalyst from the reactor fell through the valve to the regenerator leaving no protective barrier between the two pieces of equipment this allowed air from the regenerator to flow backwards through the slide valve into the reactor and then into equipment downstream of the reactor which contained hydro car forming a flammable mixture at approximately 10:00 a.m. the hazardous mixture of air and hydrocarbons found an ignition source and there was a large explosion debris from the explosion threw about 200 feet and hit a large above-ground storage tank puncturing the side of the tank and releasing hot asphalt asphalt poured out of the tank over the containment run into the refineries operating units where it spread along the ground at around 12:15 p.m. the released asphalt ignited near the storage tanks and the fire broke out the fire traveled along a stream of asphalt to the refineries crude and FCC units the fire produced a huge plume of black smoke leading to the evacuation of a portion of the town of superior typically this type of asphalt fire can burn for days a plan to extinguish the fire was developed by the refineries emergency response during around 3 o'clock they began to address the asphalt fire together with the superior Fire Department a fire truck drove to the edge of the crude unit and emergency responders sprayed dry chemical fire extinguisher inside to fight the fires that had broken out there responders also used two stationary hoses called monitors to shoot water into the cloud minute in an attempt to extinguish the flames while these fires were being put out over by the storage tanks emergency responders began to approach the large area of burning asphalt the emergency responders plan was to push the asphalt fire into an empty area near the storage tanks and then aggressively attacked the fire from multiple directions first they use two monitors one to the north and another to the west to sweep water to push the asphalt fire toward the designated containment area then when the fires were then the refinery's units had been extinguished the fire truck relocated so that it could spray the burning asphalt in the containment area with foam from the east around 5:30 an additional team he began to attack the fire from the South spraying foam from at this point the asphalt fire was completely surrounded within the containment area with the fire contained emergency responders were able to put out the asphalt fire at around 7:00 p.m. the asphalt fire had been extinguished in a matter of hours as opposed to days as had been initially feared the evacuation order was lifted and superior residents were allowed to return home nevertheless 36 husky employees and contract workers sought medical attention for injuries

Channel: USCSB

Views: 944,130

Rating: 4.9114761 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: 3RFDKpwdbEA

Length: 5min 31sec (331 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 19 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/MilesGates]

oh boy, here I go down this rabbit hole again.

[u/ShustOne]

I love this channel. This incident is almost exactly the same as the one in El Segundo where the FCC valve was corroded and not sealing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JplAKJrgyew

[u/Leptok]

Great, another one to go with the NTSB one.

[u/bikersquid]

They don't post very often but i binged the shit out of these when I found em

[u/thelonebard]

Anyone know of something similar with non chemical/factory things? I really like the format, would like to see it applied to all sorts of things, from big highway collisions to security situations, not just such a limited range of things as this channel.