Sugar Dust Explosion

Oh, this is awful!

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. (AP) - Firefighters working gingerly through a still-burning sugar refinery found three bodies Friday and were trying to reach the remains of three others killed in an explosion overnight, Georgia's top fire official said.

Crews found the three bodies in tunnels beneath the building, which was reduced to a mass of rubble, twisted beams and mangled metal, Georgia Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John Oxendine said.

...Police Chief Michael Berkow told families of missing workers that rescue efforts at the massive Imperial Sugar Company refinery had shifted to recovery operations hours after the explosion erupted late Thursday. Dozens of the nearly 100 people were working inside at the time of the blast were hurt, many critically burned.

...Officials had not determined what caused the explosion Thursday night but said they suspect sugar dust, which can be volatile.

"There was fire all over the building," said Nakishya Hill, a machine operator who escaped from the third floor of the refinery on the Savannah River.

..."It was like walking into hell," Joyce Baker said. "We had approximately 13 men who were coming out and they were burned, third-degree burns on their upper bodies. And they were trying to sit down and the only thing that they wanted was to know where the friends were."

Some of the burned men had "no skin at all" and some had skin "just dripping off them," Baker said.

..."A far as we know, it was a sugar dust explosion," Imperial Sugar CEO John Sheptor said. He said it happened in a storage silo where refined sugar is stored until it is packaged.

Workplace disasters involving combustible dust have been a concern for federal safety officials for years.

In a November 2006 report, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board, which investigates industrial chemical accidents, recommended that the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration issue a comprehensive combustible dust standard for general industry.

A posting on the CSB Web site Friday said the 2006 recommendation was still open. An OSHA spokeswoman did not immediately return a call Friday seeking comment.

...Sugar dust is combustible, according the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration's Web site. Static electricity, sparks from metal tools or a cigarette can ignite explosions. Sugar dust is suspected of sparking a nonfatal explosion last summer at a factory in Scottsbluff, Neb., and one that killed a worker in Omaha in 1996.

It's amazing just how combustible a lot of dusts are. The large surface area available within dusts is largely to blame for the phenomenon. Some people have even been moved to make an internal combustion engine that runs on grain dust:

RICHEY, Mont. - Living in a county rich with oil, Bob Candee thinks he may have the answer to the nation's energy problems. This Richey farmer believes wheat flour can be used as an alternative source of fuel.

Candee has had the idea to use flour, or grain dust, as an energy source for nearly 40 years. Now, he has a patent pending on this alternative to power an internal combustion engine.

“The fuel particles when combined with the proper amount of air can be atomized into a combustible substance,” he explained. “The resulting combustion will power a special made piston engine with a large bore. A gas vapor is used only for the ignition enhancer as the power comes from the fuel air mixture. The fuel is plain old wheat flour.”

Grain dust is a highly flammable substance. Candee said he was inspired to get going on his idea when the grain elevator at Circle, Mont., burned. In fact, grain dust is responsible for as many as 10 grain-elevator explosions a year in the U.S.

Of course, flour dust is bad too.

German television (the WDR, specifically) still reports on its Internet pages on one of the biggest flour explosions in post-war Germany, when a small fire in 1979 caused a chain reaction in the Roland Mill in Bremen, which stored large amounts of flour. Each new explosion caused more flour to rise into the air where it then exploded. The bottom line was 14 dead, 17 injured and damages of over 50 million Euro.

Dairy creamer can be bad too (here, with an illustrative video).

Fortunately, because it isn't flammable, talcum powder appears to be safe. Nic Candito used talcum powder on stage to create the illusion of smoke in our most recent production of "La Cage Aux Folles." If Nic had used flour instead, we could all have suffered terrible burns from an on-stage explosion.