EAF Tapping Camera

 

Video updated - new source - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78CBUcGtfOs

I'm going to let Michael Smith describe this incident...from his Google+ page...

Many of your know that I work at a steel mill and here one example from the video below of the dangers we face daily.  The West Camera shows the danger to workers from the explosion.  If you watch carefully on the EAF Tapping Camera, you can see the water bottle get thrown into the ladle causing the explosion.

The root cause of the incident was a partially filled water bottle was thrown into the ladle just after tapping and must have gone below the surface of the steel very quickly. We are very lucky that no one was injured, and it’s difficult to see but we had one of our operators on the sump (at the top of the stairs) at the time of the explosion.  The 2 views are the tapping camera and then the view from the camera at the LMF which gives you a perspective of the size of the explosion.

I'm curious about the second view that he mentions, because the post has only one video posted, but I'll look around for that later.

Nothing much happens for the first twenty five or so second, then a water bottle is thrown in from the right, and everything goes the H-E-double-hockey-sticks.

I spoke to a former steel mill engineer (not at this mill) about this incident, and her explanation was that the water turned to water vapor - with accompanying volume increase. A different metallurgist, however, said he thought that the heat of the molten steel caused the steelto grab the oxygen from the water, leaving behind explosive hydrogen.

Either way, it's further proof that I do not want to work in a steel mill.