Six Dead
-
-
I'm confused. There wasn't an explosion.
What happened?
Nitrogen is non-toxic, other than an excess will lower the oxygen concentration. After all, it's 78% of the air we breathe.
What leaked?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
-
Tragic. I wonder what the concentration of Nitrogen was that caused this? How did such a deadly leak go undetected until it was too late?
I don't know about this specific place, but generally it's a lot less common to monitor for nitrogen than it is for toxic gases. It's possible there was no monitoring at all.
-
I'm confused. There wasn't an explosion.
What happened?
Nitrogen is non-toxic, other than an excess will lower the oxygen concentration. After all, it's 78% of the air we breathe.
What leaked?
It's not uncommon in industrial settings to use nitrogen to purge containers - there have been a number of instances of people falling unconscious into tanks that were purged, and dying very quickly. Because it's not explosive, colourless, odourless and so common, it's dangers can get overlooked.
I'm guessing they use nitrogen in food processing as a way to keep the food fresh.
-
-
Nitrogen can be crazy bad. A friend of mine was working in a industrial plant and entered a vessel (which was thought safe) which had nitrogen.
He survived (barely) but said there is absolutely no warning. One second you are breathing normally, and the next, poof, you are unconscious. No bad smell, no seeing anything, no pain, no shortness of breathing, no warning at all.
(I realize this plant situation was different, but if someone is breathing it, they can go unconscious quite quickly I believe.)
-
I'm confused. There wasn't an explosion.
What happened?
Nitrogen is non-toxic, other than an excess will lower the oxygen concentration. After all, it's 78% of the air we breathe.
What leaked?
If it's 99% of the air you breathe you die pretty quickly.
-
If it's 99% of the air you breathe you die pretty quickly.
That's more than obvious.
I want to understand how such a high FiN2 occurred in the first place.
If a liquid nitrogen container suddenly depressurises then liquid nitrogen gets turned into nitrogen gas. A litre of liquid nitrogen at 90 Kelvin (roughly 50 moles) turns into 1200 litres of nitrogen gas at 298 Kelvin. If this happens
in an enclosed space people are in big trouble. It's why being in a lift with a cannister of liquid nitrogen is forbidden.
