October 30, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

Billings Gazette

By CLAIR JOHNSON
Of The Gazette StaffAn ExxonMobil investigative team looking into an explosion and fire at the Lockwood oil refinery Oct. 17 has finished its field work, but a cause has not yet been determined…. (Full Story)

__________
The fire burned for a few hours and caused 685 pounds of sulfur dioxide [SO₂] to be emitted during the incident.  Montana Sulphur & Chemical Co., which treats ExxonMobil’s sulfur-bearing gases, also reported flaring sulfur dioxide in a major malfunction after the refinery fire.

Montana Sulphur & Chemical Co. said it flared 5,673 pounds of sulfur dioxide over almost three hours in the late afternoon on Oct. 18.

On account of the explosion-and-fire-related SO₂ release, air monitoring equipment measured elevated SO₂ readings of 120 ppb, short of the safe threshold for Montana of 500 ppb.  Safe limits depend on duration of exposure.  No time interval for the measurement was identified in the article.

Alberta’s one-hour guideline for sulphur dioxide emission reporting is 170 parts per billion (ppb).  The 8-hour occupational exposure limit is 2,000 ppb or 2 ppm.   (Link, Source: Canadian Safety Council, Data Sheet, Occupational Safety and Health and Province of Alberta Occupational Health and Safety Act, Chemical Hazards Regulations)

Posted in Explosions & Fires, Sulphur-Dioxide | Print | No Comments »

October 29, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

folc.ca

Holland America Lines test seawater-scrubbing of diesel exhausts on cruise ship

Massive sulphate disposal in seawater, is it safe, or will history repeat itself?

Walter Schneider

According to announcements by Holland America Cruise Lines and by Kristallon (the maker of the scrubber) earlier this year and later, one of the best solutions ever devised to reduce and curb cruise-ship-engine emissions, and thereby the massive sulphur-dioxide (SO₂) pollution produced by cruise ships, was about to be tested and is undergoing testing right now, with promising results.

The seawater scrubber on the cruise ship Zaandam (Inland route Vancouver to Alaska) will use 450 tonnes of seawater an hour to help convert SO₂ to sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) and to sulphate (SO₄^2-). The altered seawater from the conversion of the SO₂ by the seawater scrubber will be discharged - diluted at a ratio of 1:10 - into the ocean. The conversion of the remaining sulphuric acid contained in the discharge water will then be completed in the ocean, to convert the remaining sulphuric acid to sulphate.

In essence, such a conversion process will do what nature does anyway, but it will take a shortcut and eliminate atmospheric pollution and the impact of acid rain caused by cruise-ship emissions. When SO₂ is discharged into the air, it is transformed into sulphur-trioxide (SO₃) and then, upon contact with water in the air, changed to sulphuric acid and into sulphate. That produces acid rain.

A diesel-powered ship equipped with a seawater scrubber will locally discharge concentrated “acid rain” right into the ocean and, where a cruise ship cannot connect to an on-shore source of electric energy (there are none on the Vancouver-Alaska route), right into the water of the harbour where it is berthed.

Various studies that were commissioned to examine the issues involved concentrated on the “acid rain” issue. They mention sulphate-production and -dumping only in passing, if at all. Those studies that mention sulphate consider it to be harmless, but is it?

Sulphate is a source of oxygen for anaerobic bacteria. Anaerobic bacteria metabolize sulphate and produce, amongst other things, hydrogen-sulphide (evil-smelling in small concentrations and scentless but harmful and even extremely deadly in moderate concentrations). Aside from the fact that the dumping of sulphate causes anaerobic bacteria to thrive in seawater at the bottoms of bodies of water that are starved of oxygen (common in coast waters), the anaerobic bacteria cause a concern that none of the seawater-scrubber studies I examined mention at all.

Anaerobic bacteria that metabolize sulphate convert the all-pervasive mercury in water (its presence there being largely a result of atmospheric distribution of pollution by coal-fired power plants) to a form (methyl-mercury) that is bio-available but not bio-degradable. The danger of methyl-mercury in the biomass is that it becomes concentrated as it moves up through the food chain — by a factor of about 10 every time it passes from one level to the next. At times and in some localities methyl-mercury causes fish (who are one step removed from the top of the food chain) that are contaminated with excessive levels of methyl-mercury to become unsafe to eat.

Methyl-mercury poisoning in humans who regularly ingest fish or shellfish was first discovered in 1956 in Japan, where it produced the infamous Minamata disease and its devastating results. Minamata disease also manifested itself many years later in Canada, in humans that lived, and regularly ate fish, in areas downstream from pulp mills.

Are seawater scrubbers on cruise ships safe for humans? Who knows? One thing is certain. Although the cause of Minamata disease was known for many years, prior to 1970 it was not considered in calculating its impact on humans when pulp mills using mercury-polluted bleach and discharging mercury-polluted water into streams were constructed in Canada.

Minamata disease in Ontario, Canada, was discovered in 1970. The human misery and costs caused by Minamata disease in Ontario were enormous.

There are many settlements along the Inland Route to Alaska that subsist on fish. There are others that sell fish to the whole world. Will seawater scrubbers on cruise ships keep all consumers of fish from that area safe? Who knows? One would think that is worth taking a look at.

However, as of now it does not appear that anyone involved in studying seawater-scrubbing of diesel exhausts of any ship is looking beyond the goal of preventing most or all SO2 produced by ships from entering the atmosphere. The impact that the injection of a massive volume of sulphate will have on the local ecology in coastal waters, in relation to giving anaerobic bacteria a boost that will enable an escalation of the rate of conversion of precipitated mercury to methyl-mercury, appears not to be an issue that is being examined in connection with sulphate production by seawater scrubbers. Nevertheless, the relationship of anaerobic bacteria thriving on sulphate and causing an escalation of the production of methyl-mercury in the process is a fact. For example:

Coastal Environmental Quality Initiative, University of California
Contribution of Iron-Reducing Bacteria of Mercury Methylation in Marine Sediments, by Emily J. Fleming and D C. Nelson; Paper 040, Dec. 8, 2006 (212 kB PDF file)

Quote: [methyl-mercury] enters food chains where it bioaccumulates to concentrations that can cause impaired neurological function in a variety of higher organisms (fish, birds, humans). This toxic conversion has, in the scientific literature, been quite dogmatically attributed to activities of sulfate-reducing bacteria….

More reports and study reports can be accessed through a google-search (about 364 entries on the search-return list)

There may not be any cause for concern with the environmental impact of seawater scrubbers, but it is possible that it exists. If that is the case, and if seawater scrubbers still are permitted to be used, then many people will become severely and incurably ill, and ultimately the taxpayers will be left holding the bag.

Posted in Pollution: Health Issues, Bunker Fuel, Acid Rain, Heavy-Metal Poisoning & Pollution, Hydrogen-Sulphide, Emission Incidents & Issues, Sulphur-Dioxide | Print | No Comments »

October 19, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

Canadian Occupational Health & Safety News
October 15, 2007

Alberta oil sands fire forces mass evacuation of facility

FORT MCMURRAY (Canadian OH&S News) — More than a thousand workers from an Alberta-based energy company were sent home following an early morning oil sands fire at a facility 25 kilometres north of Fort McMurray earlier this month.

The fire began in a drum of Suncor Energy Inc’s Millennium Coker Unit (a key processing unit in an oil sands upgrader) at around 6 am on October 2, states a press release issued by the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board (EUB). It took approximately 45 minutes to extinguish the fire, adds Josh Stewart, spokesman for Alberta Environment…. (Full Story)

[Update by folc.ca - 2007 11 08: The link no longer functions. Moreover, the website of OHSCanada contains not a single reference to Suncor, a fire at Suncor or any evacuations there that can be accessed through either an Internet search or through OHS’ search facility at their website. That is outright Orwellian editing of recorded history.

Fortunately, the full article from which the quoted paragraphs were excerpted is still available on the Internet at a few other websites that, unlike the OHS article, are fully archived at the Internet Archive.

Unlike the recorded history of the society that George Orwell wrote about in “1984“, any incident thought worth recording by anyone is impossible to erase now, for as long as total control and censorship of the Internet is not handed over to our governments.]

Stories and comments on Suncor coker fire

Comment by folc.ca: Why should anyone in Lamont County care about the Suncor fire?

The Suncor site is 25 km away from Fort McMurray. The Oct. 2 Suncor fire caused the evacuation of more than a thousand workers. How many thousands of people would have had to be evacuated if the fire would not have been 25 km but only two 2 km away from Fort McMurray, the distance between Bruderheim and the proposed HAZCO waste-sulphur storage and handling site?

The evacuation zone identified in the emergency response measures proposed by HAZCO includes neither Bruderheim nor Lamont. Its boundaries extend no farther than 1.5 km away from the proposed HAZCO site.

HAZCO insists that explosions and fires involving sulphur fires and the release of massive volumes of sulphur dioxide produced by such fires are not a threat to the residents of Lamont County. However, as the record of such incidents at http://folc.ca shows, and as is also shown in the category Explosions and Fires at this blog, sulphur fires and even sulphur-storage, -forming and -handling fires happen, happen frequently and happen even in Alberta. Such fires caused evacuations, and at times loss of health and of lives for miles around.

HAZCOS’ proposed sulphur-forming and -shipping facility must not be permitted to be constructed in a location close to areas with high population density. That still leaves the question as to whether the risk of having such a facility is tolerable even in areas with low population density.

Is the acceptance of risk to health and lives a calculated one and a matter of degree? If so, then how many lives constitute too many lives?

The location of Shell’s Shantz sulphur-storage, -forming and -shipping facility was picked because it is more than 40km away from the Natural Gas processing and desulphurization facility at Caroline, so as to remove the risk to Caroline residents that sulphur-storage, -forming and -shipping poses.

If a 40km distance between a sulphur facility and the residents of nearby communities was deemed safe then, how come that HAZCO now insists on lowering that standard to a small fraction (2km) of what it was when a permit was granted for the construction of Shell’s Shantz facility?

In case you wonder about whose sulphur will be handled by HAZCO, the majority, if not all, of that sulphur is being, and will be, produced and owned by Shell.

Posted in Explosions & Fires, Community & Industry, Emission Incidents & Issues, Hazco, Sulphur Logistics, Sulphur-Dioxide | Print | No Comments »

October 10, 2007 by Walter Schneider.

BiopactU.S. DOE to invest $197 million in three large carbon sequestration projects

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announces that it has awarded the first three large-scale carbon sequestration projects in the United States and the largest single set in the world to date. The three projects - Plains Carbon Dioxide Reduction Partnership; Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership; and Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration - will conduct large volume tests for the storage of one million or more tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep saline reservoirs….(Full Story)

One of those carbon (and hydrogen-sulphide) sequestration projects involves the provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.  Specifically in relation to Alberta,

A second test will be conducted in northwestern Alberta, Canada, and will demonstrate the co-sequestration of CO2 and hydrogen sulfide from a large gas-processing plant into a deep saline formation. This will provide data about how hydrogen sulfide affects the sequestration process. The Plains partnership includes North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Missouri, and Wisconsin, along with the Canadian provinces of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba….(Full Story)

Given that the plant-gate price per long ton of waste sulphur in Alberta saw a steady decline from a high of $56.24 in May 2003 down to $0.00 in July 2007, it is very curious that HAZCO intends to establish a sulphur-forming and -processing facility to the east of Bruderheim, especially given the fact of HAZCO’s statements to the extent that one of the previously faltered proposals for such a facility in Thorhild County was allegedly canned by HAZCO because at that time there was a similar slump in waste-sulphur prices.

Due to the low prices for Alberta waste-sulphur that will now most likely prevail for many years to come, it would appear that HAZCO’s proposal for sulphur forming and processing in Lamont County is now even less likely to ever be economical in relation to the Canadian economy than it was when the Thorhild proposal got scrapped.

However, sulphur-processors, -shippers and -handlers still get paid as long as they manage to  inject sulphur into the glutted word market, regardless of  what the world market price for sulphur happens to be, as long as  Canada wants to get rid of its waste-sulphur, and as long as the taxpayers and end-consumers of oil and gas are willing to pay the price.

It appears that the only viable process for HAZCO (but of course only through subsidization by end consumers of oil-refinery products) is the long-term storing of waste-sulphur in Lamont County.  HAZCO vehemently insists it has no interest in pursuing that option.

See also Sulphur glut poses storage nightmare.

Posted in World Sulphur Glut, Sulphur Logistics, Hydrogen-Sulphide | Print | No Comments »