\u2022 The temperature inside the failing tank has risen to 90 degrees, up from 77 a day earlier.
\u2022 The main hope to avoid an explosion is to keep spraying water on the tank, keeping temperatures cooler.
\u2022 It\u2019s possible an explosion can be avoided if the chemical reaction occurring inside the tank is slowed down. <\/p>\n
The battle to keep a highly toxic chemical from exploding took a step backward Saturday.<\/p>\n
The temperature in a critically failing tank filled with a highly toxic chemical and at risk of exploding in Orange County is rising, not falling, officials said.<\/p>\n
By Saturday morning, the temperature in the pressurized tank at an aerospace firm in Garden Grove was 90 degrees, up from 77 degrees a day earlier. Temperatures are increasing about a degree per hour, Craig Covey, an Orange County Fire Authority division chief, said Saturday morning. <\/p>\n
But with the chemical crisis in its third day, new details are offering more insight into how it could be resolved, though no one is sure when.<\/p>\n
The question, experts say, is whether officials can somehow deal with the dangerous chemicals in a way that does not end in a blast or the type of spill that causes environmental degradation.<\/p>\n
Chemical leak at GKN Aerospace<\/p>\n
The Garden Grove facility neighbors an elementary school and residential neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Trying to cool damaged tank<\/p>\n
An increase in temperature raises the risk of an explosion. <\/p>\n
The temperature gauge on the tank detects temperatures only up to 100 degrees. Officials haven\u2019t disclosed at what particular temperature would they think that an explosion is imminent.<\/p>\n
What does it mean that the temperature is rising?<\/p>\n
The fact is that the temperature in the tank indicates that the liquid MMA molecules \u2014 monomers, essentially a bunch of single molecules \u2014 are reacting with one another to form polymers, forming a solid, according to Elias Picazo, assistant professor of chemistry at USC.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reaction is releasing heat. That\u2019s going to initiate more reaction to happen, so it might even cascade.\u201d<\/p>\n
The big fear is producing what\u2019s known as \u201cthermal runaway reactions.\u201d <\/p>\n
Covey has said that if the temperature in the tank exceeds a certain threshold \u201cwe know the tank is going into thermal runaway, and we\u2019re going to pull everybody out of the area, make sure it\u2019s safe, and let the tank do what it\u2019s going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The fact that some liquid in the tank is reacting to become a solid is probably what happened to gum up the valve leading into the tank. The primary solution to resolve this crisis would\u2019ve been to pump a neutralizing agent into the problem tank, quenching it and making it no longer explosive. <\/p>\n
But that valve is clogged up, and so there is no way to get the neutralizing agent inside the tank. Nor is there a way to slowly drain the tank of the MMA toxic chemical. <\/p>\n
Keeping the tank as cool as possible could be a workable approach to prevent an explosion. <\/p>\n
How are officials gaming out scenarios?<\/p>\n
There remains the possibility that the tank will still explode or rupture in a massive leak that could send the chemical to foul up waterways and the ocean. Officials have marked a huge evacuation zone \u2014 anywhere from about 1 to 3 miles from the tank \u2014 affecting an estimated 40,000 residents covering portions of the cities of Garden Grove, Anaheim, Buena Park, Cypress, Stanton and Westminster.<\/p>\n
It is clear that the spraying of water on the tank is helping. <\/p>\n
Even though the temperature is rising inside the tank, not putting any cool water on it at all would have allowed the tank\u2019s interior temperature to rise far more quickly, Picazo said. <\/p>\n
So the main solution right now is for crews to do their best to keep the tank as cool as possible \u2014 and buy time.<\/p>\n
And this may be the only option that avoids a catastrophe. <\/p>\n
How keeping the tank cool could avoid an explosion<\/p>\n
Earlier Friday, Covey said chemists told him that there were only two options ahead of them: an explosion or a massive leak. But talks with experts indicate that there could be a \u201cthird option\u201d \u2014 keeping the tank as cool as possible. <\/p>\n
Continuing to pour cool water on the tank could allow the liquid chemical inside to cure at a slower rate \u2014 becoming a solid at a slower speed \u2014 and reduce the buildup of pressure inside the tank, Covey said. <\/p>\n
\u201cLike an ice cube that freezes from the outside in \u2014 this stuff cures, it heats up and cures from the outside in. While it\u2019s doing that process, it\u2019s building that pressure,\u201d Covey said. <\/p>\n
The tank has some capacity to hold in some pressure. There is empty space between the surface level of the MMA chemical to the ceiling of the tank. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re hoping that that space can absorb a slower cure rate and not over-pressure and blow up,\u201d Covey said. <\/p>\n
In other words, continuing to cool the tank could slow down the chemical reaction occurring inside in a way that avoids an explosion. <\/p>\n
Picazo agreed. <\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the best-case scenarios is to let the [MMA] monomers react, but you do it in a controlled way,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe if it\u2019s slow enough, you can form solid within the tank and cause the monomers, the reactive monomers, to stay apart from one another.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they don\u2019t come into contact, therefore they cannot react,\u201d Picazo said. \u201cYou need contact for reactivity, and you can\u2019t have contact if you have solid state.<\/p>\n
At that point, \u201cthen you can start to think about other solutions of how to quench the unreacted starting material.\u201d<\/p>\n
Can the worse-case scenario be prevented?<\/p>\n
Firefighters said they\u2019re hopeful they can prevent an explosion. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re optimistic,\u201d Covey said. \u201cWe\u2019re bringing people in from all over the country, talking to people all over the place, trying to come up with additional options. <\/p>\n
\u201cLetting this thing just fail and blow up is unacceptable to us.\u201d <\/p>\n
Why crews erroneously thought temperatures were cooling inside the tank<\/p>\n
Officials on Friday had thought spraying water was actually cooling down the problem tank \u2014 and not merely reducing the speed at which the temperature was increasing. <\/p>\n
On Friday evening, Picazo said drone thermometers indicated the tank was at 61 degrees, and the goal was to get the tank down to 50 degrees, which would be its \u201chappy place.\u201d<\/p>\n
But as it turns out, the drone thermometers were detecting the temperatures only on the outside of the problem tank, not its inside. <\/p>\n
Officials discovered the error of their assumptions when a crew of workers returned overnight to the problem tank, which has an estimated 7,000 gallons of MMA in it. Adjacent to the problem tank is a second tank, which has 15,000 gallons of chemicals in it, but is not at immediate risk of failure. <\/p>\n
Nonetheless, officials wanted to inject a neutralizing agent into that second tank, so that if the primary failing tank explodes, it doesn\u2019t cause an even greater blast by igniting the second tank. So there was an overnight operation of chemists and first responders sent in to try to get that done, which was attempted even though it put them \u201cin harm\u2019s way,\u201d Covey said. <\/p>\n
When they arrived, they were able to again manually read the internal temperature gauge of the failing tank. (That gauge isn\u2019t visible unless someone is there to read it; it\u2019s covered by the cooling sprays of water and cannot be seen from a distance, nor by putting a drone with a camera near it, Covey said.)<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s when the crew realized that the tank\u2019s internal temperature was at 90 degrees, and that relying on drones to estimate the temperature from afar showed only the temperature of the outside of the tank, not the inside. <\/p>\n
Staff writers Hailey Branson-Potts, Hannah Fry and Eric Licas contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2022 The temperature inside the failing tank has risen to 90 degrees, up from 77 a day earlier.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":816160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,336693,331277,23512,336264,21885,2961,224,5337,336694,1408,11260,13992,336692,9071,15475,30956,527,14164],"class_list":["post-818242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-chemical-crisis","tag-craig-covey","tag-degree","tag-elias-picazo","tag-explosion","tag-la","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-monomer","tag-official","tag-outside","tag-pressure","tag-problem-tank","tag-tank","tag-temperature","tag-toxic-chemical","tag-water","tag-way"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116627578755247939","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818242\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}