Sugar Refinery Explosion at Imperial Sugar Factory – Port Wentworth, Georgia
Incident Date: February 7, 2008
Who knew that tiny particles of sugar dust could be so dangerous? Federal investigators’ analysis has shown that the explosion at the Imperial Sugar factory was accidental, and that the root cause was ignition of clouds of sugar dust. When I think of sugar dust, making cotton candy is what comes to mind. However, when the stuff builds up, it can ignite and explode. To avoid this problem, Imperial has extraction equipment that moves all the dust particles up to dust collectors on the roof. Apparently there was an explosion three weeks before the recent deadly explosion resulting from ignition of accumulated sugar dust in one of these dust collectors that the earlier explosion occurred. The sugar was apparently ignited by a small piece of metal that got into the equipment and created a spark. The good news, for this earlier, more minor explosion, was that the ventilation panels in the dust collector opened as designed to minimize damage. It’s unclear how this explosion may or may not have played into the more recent, fatal explosion, but one thing is clear: they weren’t so lucky this time. On the February 7th explosion, which has killed eleven workers so far (fourteen are still in critical condition), the ignition occurred in a basement area beneath the plant’s storage silos. Although this area also has extraction equipment, investigators have determined that there was still enough dust there to cause the explosion and feed the subsequent fire, which raged for a week. What they don’t know, yet, is whether the extraction equipment was working, and what caused the sugar dust to explode. A very basic root cause analysis follows, based on the information known so far.
