Distillery Fire

Smaug

Also claim they ran the system 100 times or some such amount.

Fire Marshall says the packing material was clogged and no pressure relief so says the grape vine.

Kapea

So Joe Kennedy was not involved?

grim

Thought they came with PRV's as standard.

Smaug

@grim said: Thought they came with PRV's as standard.

Yes I read that. Not sure what to think about that?

Harry

We're following this on Pint's Artisan site...

Fifer is an insider, Links to interviews, lawsuits etc. The lawsuit doc (download it) is really pertinent to all. Especially to manufacturers of stills such as StillDragon.

As an aside, something is niggling in back of my mind. All this comes too close to the recent demand by TTB for info from manufacturers. Coincidence? or (heaven forbid) a planned action? Whatever, it's a "heads-up". Be prepared.

grim

Manufacturer liability likely falls outside of the TTB's jurisdiction, they are more concerned about tax dollars, but there are plenty of authorities who do have jurisdiction, that will likely be interested parties.

grim

Thanks for the link, lawsuit looks interesting as well. I'm really waiting to see that Fire Marshall report.

dad

Only my take...

A 300 gallon (40 cubic feet), full of liquid, 10-12 ga seamed copper boiler, pressurized to a complete rupture failure could not hold enough pressure to take down a 1,500 sq foot building with 10 foot ceiling (15,000 cubic feet). The volumes and math don't support it.

The fact that the boiler moved off it's base and ended up in the parking lot, implies a failure or an explosion under the boiler. An explosion above would have removed the cap or smashed the boiler flat. It was gas of some sort.

If the boiler failed and put out the flame under it, it could have leaked gas into the building. Although even the most basic household water heaters and furnaces have a thermal coupler that stops the gas flow if the flame goes out. Or, if the condenser water failed it could have leaked alcohol vapor into the building.

Any of the three scenarios above, the bottom line, was leaving a still unattended.

TheMechWarrior

Given that ethanol vapour is heavier than air and condenser failure followed by a build-up of ethanol vapour at ground level sounds about right. The moment the distillers opened the door and let a draft in the ethanol vapour lifted enough to encounter the flame and kaboom. All just theories, it will all come out in the final report. But that could take years?

grim

We will probably never know, but the extent of the damage does seem extensive for the way it would have failed. We could probably speculate and come up with dozens of reasons. Hell, they could have been running the still under pressure for weeks or months, it just didn't fail in the previous runs.

Trying to find another picture of that still to see if the PRV was installed. There are photos of similar stills that clearly show it, but based on the angle of the subject photo, it might be obscured behind the column.

If it was there, why did it not work, could it have been clogged by baked-on mash or plugged?

dad

Do we think all 300 gallon stills have a PRV?

Harry

@grim said: We will probably never know, but the extent of the damage does seem extensive for the way it would have failed. We could probably speculate and come up with dozens of reasons. Hell, they could have been running the still under pressure for weeks or months, it just didn't fail in the previous runs.

Trying to find another picture of that still to see if the PRV was installed. There are photos of similar stills that clearly show it, but based on the angle of the subject photo, it might be obscured behind the column.

If it was there, why did it not work, could it have been clogged by baked-on mash or plugged?

@grim, I posted another photo view @ timeline info on the AD thread.

grim

Well, there it is, you can see the PRV plumbed in that second photo.

But why the hell did the weld let go the first time? Had it been running under pressure since the get-go?

Harry

Go to the facebook page of the photos here.

Click on any of the pics. You can then read the posts dialog associated with the pic.

Lotta familiar faces. Tim, Tickle, Jim Tom. All from Discovery Moonshiners.

grim

Always irked me that the product condenser on those Revenoors is so damn tiny, I wonder what size tubing they got running through there - 1/4" maybe? Run time on that narrow column monster must be 12+ hours.

Harry

I don't think there's any tubing in the condenser. More likely a "can inside can" traditional arrangement.

FloridaCracker

Heartbreaking to look at those pictures knowing what is coming.

grim

Silver Trail Distillery Accident Investigation Response Report

Looks like the pressure relief valve installed on the still was rated at 150 psi and perhaps intended for water heaters - the boiler appears to have ruptured due to pressure (not a vapor explosion as previously speculated).

Harry

More discussion here...

Details on Silver Trail Explosion @ AD

EdwinCroissant

I know, it's armchair engineering but after reading the report and looking at the pictures:

The still was bought with 4 electric heating elements. A similar still from the maker is rated 40 kW. According to the report the diameter of the capped column was 4 inches (a vent hole is not mentioned) . I estimate that the column could handle 8 to 10 kW at the most.

The owner quadrupled the firepower with 4 burners to 160 kW. The picture of the burners during the first run got the comment: That''s what a million BTU's looks like under 300 gallons of LBL mash-*Could pull a train a mile long – Yeah the pressure is on [..]. The configuration of the 4 burners brought the flames also nearer to the rim. It is plausible that the boiler material got hot enough to flash boil the liquid inside right at the surface and to form a vapor layer between the boiler and the liquid. Because vapor is a crappy conductor of heat, the boiler metal got hot enough to melt the silver solder joints so during the second run the seam split open where the side wall connected to the bottom.

I think that the initial idea was to shorten the heat-up time to less then an hour but after the split the owner decided to stick to the original 2-3 hours by turning the heat down. Maybe at that moment the bottom – sidewall silver soldered connection was weakened. Also the report mentioned that the bottom of the pot showed signs of scorching where the burners were located and excessive scorching on one area of the bottom that was showing much greater signs of heat damage the the other three.

The large burner capacity, the mismatch between burner capacity and column capacity, the unavailability of information about the heat applied and the pressure of the still to the operators makes it at least plausible that this still was driven to hard to long and after 3 years the pot popped it's bottom, and launched itself out of the distillery into the gravel driveway (a distance of 70 feet) with a boiling hot very wet fart.

Please note the the energy even in a 5 psi pressurized still is considerable. 5 psi increase the boiling point with 8 ºC. The content of the pot is 1000 kg and the specific heat of water is 4186 J/(kgK) So the latent heat caused by the higher boiling point is 33.5 MJ. This is equivalent with 7.3 kg of TNT. When the bottom pops the pressure drop to atmospheric pressure and the energy is instantly released. The vaporisation heat of water is 2249 kJ/kg so ~ 15kg of boiler content is instantly evaporated. Expansion factor is 1600 so 24 m3 of vapor is produced.

I have the gut feeling that the still popped it's bottom at a much lower pressure. There was no visible signs of dislocation of the platform the still stood on or the other still or any signs inside the structure of any explosion or blast wave. I think it just toppled over and slided through the steel doors into the driveway.

grim

"The body of the copper still (aka the "pot") was located approximately 50' from the north end of the structure in the gravel laying on its side. The copper column of the still, which would have been bolted to the top of the pot, was located in proximity to the pot and approximately 72' from the end of the structure. Also located 95' from the north end of the building in the gravel driveway was a round stainless steel plate. The plate appeared to be utilized as an access opening in the top of the pot of the copper still. Closer examination of the pot revealed the side wall of the pot to be intact. However, the bottom of the still was folded back away from the side walls and only remained attached at one narrow point."

"At some point during the event the copper column was ripped off the top of the pot just below where the pots flange was secured to the pot."

IMHO - My inclination is that pressures were likely far in excess of 5psi.

EdwinCroissant

@grim said: IMHO - My inclination is that pressures were likely far in excess of 5psi.

When I look at the Mythbusters exploding boiler experiments these boilers went 300 to 500 feet in the air. A boiler that exploded at Norwich, Connecticut, December 23, 1881, was 3 feet in diameter, 7 feet high and operating at 60 psi. The explosion probably took place at or a little below this pressure, throwing the boiler through the roof and high over a group of buildings and a tall tree close by, finally burying itself half its diameter in the frozen ground. I think that even at 5 psi the boiler, or at least the column, would have gone through the roof.

You can see that the bottom of the pot is still attached near the heaters that were facing the door. I think that the kink in the column is either made when the top of the column hit the ceiling when the still toppled over (the position of the kink in respect to the thermometer look consistent and there is not much head space between the top of the column and the ceiling) or when the still hit the door column first. Note that the scorching marks at on place are very near the edge of the bottom.

Kapea

Pressure is deceiving. 5psi over one square foot is 720 pounds of force. The equivalant of three large men standing on a one foot square plate. A little goes a long way.