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Two Things Should Be Added About Explosion Safety In your July story about preventing
metal explosions (“21 Ways to Avoid Molten Metal Explosions,” p. 34), you neglected to talk about the hazard of melting down grinding and shot blast- ing dust. If these are put in a reverb furnace, the flame can cause a dust explosion. This took down a noted metalcasting facility many years ago, killing one employee and destroying the building.
The only safe way to remelt dust is in a sweat furnace. You also only partly stated the reason aluminum and water are such a bad combination. Aluminum is extremely electronegative. When molten alumi- num hits water, the aluminum takes the oxygen away from it, releasing a lot of heat as the aluminum is oxidized, thereby increasing the temperature of the remaining steam dramatically and
molten metal explosion issue in July. It is encouraging to see you are staying on top of metalcasting safety issues. Unfortunately, I can’t agree with the comment that dangerous accidents are infrequent. In our research several years back, we found there was a molten metal explosion every five or six days on average. Throwing in the other events noted, I can’t help but imagine these are daily events. Don’t get me wrong—I think you did
Newscast Laforo Iron Foundry, Sainte-Claire,
Québec, has placed an order with LaempeReich Corp., Trussville, Ala., for a new core machine.
Blasch Precision Ceramics, Albany,
N.Y., announced it commissioned an 18,860-sq.-ft. expansion at its headquar- ters and manufacturing facility.
HA International, Westmont, Ill., announced it purchased Wedron Flux from Black Lab Corp., Chardon, Ohio, on April 1.
Revstone Industries LLC, Lexington,
Ky., has purchased the forged met- als facility of Kaiser Aluminum Corp., Foothill Ranch, Calif., and will operate it as part of its cast metals division. MC
MODERN CASTING / September 2010 13
a nice job with this article. Pointing out inadequate drying of ladles was par- ticularly effective. Just a few years ago, four or five workers died as the result of tapping into a wet ladle in Austria.
releasing hydrogen gas. (Aluminum metalcasters are always having to deal with hydrogen gas in the metal. It comes from water.) In an explosion caused by water, large volumes of hydrogen are released, causing a secondary hydrogen gas explosion and releasing more heat.
CHUCK JULIAN
CITY ALUMINUM FOUNDRY WATERFORD, MICH.
Are Dangerous Accidents Really Infrequent in the Metalcasting Industry? I really like the way you covered the
INDUSTRY NEWS
Keep hitting hard on safety!
PAT LEPER SAVEWAY USA CORP. NORTH CANTON, OHIO
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