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Chemistry!
Apr. 15th, 2013 09:05 pmA quote from "Ignite", a book about the work of determining a rocket fuel in the 50s, regarding a particular compound related to flourine.
...the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a
metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always rec-
ommended a good pair of running shoes. And even if you don't have
a fire, the results can be devastating enough when chlorine trifluoride
gets loose, as the General Chemical Co. discovered when they had a
big spill. Their salesmen were awfully coy about discussing the mat-
ter, and it wasn't until I threatened to buy my RFNA from Du Pont
that one of them would come across with the details.
It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they
were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder
of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier
to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled
the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly,
it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It
chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three-
foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which
corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess.
Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood,
and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted
down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty —
the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was
found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2
and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.
...the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a
metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always rec-
ommended a good pair of running shoes. And even if you don't have
a fire, the results can be devastating enough when chlorine trifluoride
gets loose, as the General Chemical Co. discovered when they had a
big spill. Their salesmen were awfully coy about discussing the mat-
ter, and it wasn't until I threatened to buy my RFNA from Du Pont
that one of them would come across with the details.
It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they
were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder
of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier
to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled
the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly,
it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It
chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three-
foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which
corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess.
Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood,
and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted
down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty —
the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was
found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2
and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.
