Well, that escalated quickly.
June 10, 2022 4:02 PM   Subscribe

[slyt] An unexpected leak in an aluminium (aluminum) factory causes a fire problem, and eventually a bit of damage to the ceiling. However, the worker still chooses to rescue their phone; the right call to make?
posted by Wordshore (49 comments total) 20 users marked this as a favorite
 
For a good five seconds it looked like there was some kind of fire suppression system putting out the fire. Then the roof caved in.
posted by meowzilla at 4:20 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


However, the worker still chooses to rescue their phone; the right call to make?

I'm reliably informed that it would have been better if they'd run back to press the emergency stop for the hydraulic pump, rather than rescue their phone. But who am I to judge.
posted by automatronic at 4:25 PM on June 10, 2022 [13 favorites]


I c what you did there
posted by chavenet at 4:26 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


This one's gonna be featured on safety training videos for years to come in the section called "Do Not Stop To Rescue Your Phone! AND DEFINITELY DON'T START PLAYING WITH IT ON YOUR WAY OUT THE DOOR!"
posted by Jawn at 4:47 PM on June 10, 2022 [8 favorites]


I don’t get why the other worker lit the torch he was holding almost simultaneously with the jet which went up to the ceiling.
posted by jamjam at 5:00 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yes, this video's making the rounds but the lack of accompanying information about what's going on is annoying.
posted by Rash at 5:10 PM on June 10, 2022 [5 favorites]


All I could think of the whole time was "Why the fuck isn't anyone going for the E-Stop?!?"
posted by tclark at 5:18 PM on June 10, 2022 [6 favorites]


Thermite??
posted by njohnson23 at 5:26 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


The dropped ceiling couldn't be up to code. That went up like tinder.
posted by Max Power at 5:41 PM on June 10, 2022 [9 favorites]


Reminds me that the unofficial policy on most North Sea oil rigs in the nineties was that in the event of a scary fire we would get everyone on the lifeboats and run away.
Known as LTFB - let the fucker burn.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:54 PM on June 10, 2022 [25 favorites]


I was impressed by the camera that filmed this, but then I realized that this video probably ends at the moment it stopped working, which is still solid, but maybe not exceptional.
posted by snofoam at 6:02 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


I don’t get why the other worker lit the torch he was holding almost simultaneously with the jet which went up to the ceiling.--jamjam

I don't know but he immediately yelled at the employee who ran to get (and use!) his phone. And then he ran over to stay with him, closely watching the fire, until he got away. So, pretty brave.
posted by eye of newt at 6:16 PM on June 10, 2022 [6 favorites]


For a good five seconds it looked like there was some kind of fire suppression system putting out the fire. Then the roof caved in.

That's not hydraulic fluid or something?
posted by etc passwd at 6:24 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hydraulic fluid. Theres no emergency stop for a few thousand PSI of pressure. And it's very flammable when turned into an aerosol.

More links and pictures at the /r/catastrophicfailure thread.
posted by JoeZydeco at 6:42 PM on June 10, 2022 [9 favorites]


Sure there is. Compressed hydraulic fluid does not store energy.
posted by ryanrs at 6:46 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


It reminds me of a place where I used to work. There was a pair of photographs posted on a bulletin board. The first photo showed a hallway. A couple of guys were talking. A guy was looking at a clipboard. A guy was entering some data on a kiosk. This photo was labelled, "Before the silane explosion." The second photo showed the same hallway, with the same guys, running with their hands over their ears. This photo was labelled, "After the silane explosion."
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 7:55 PM on June 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


I thought it was liquid aluminum spraying up to the ceiling. Absolutely unreal how fast that all burned up. But then, every fire moves much faster than you think.

Considering how much we keep in our phones, I can definitely see myself reflexively running for the damn thing and realizing how stupid it was when it was too late.
posted by Countess Elena at 7:58 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


Those two have used all the luck they have in this life.

Just gonna edit out baseless speculation
posted by Slackermagee at 8:06 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


editing out baseless speculation
posted by Slackermagee at 8:07 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


I want you to know that I'm mentally reinserting extravagantly baseless speculation into your comments. Like, what if that one guy that ran for the phone is just an anencephalic meatpuppet being piloted by an AI living in the phone? Then it would be foolish NOT to go back for it!
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:22 PM on June 10, 2022 [41 favorites]


This is a good commercial for iCloud and other data/phone backup services.
posted by oddman at 8:27 PM on June 10, 2022 [2 favorites]


As well as for Nomex raincoats.
posted by rhizome at 8:30 PM on June 10, 2022 [4 favorites]


Metafilter: I'm mentally reinserting extravagantly baseless speculation into your comments.
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 8:32 PM on June 10, 2022 [39 favorites]


Film strip.
posted by clavdivs at 9:58 PM on June 10, 2022 [3 favorites]


Seems like in hindsight they made the right call. Got the phone and got out.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:56 PM on June 10, 2022 [1 favorite]


so you're saying they made the...
alu-minimum effort?
posted by bartleby at 11:05 PM on June 10, 2022 [7 favorites]


Thermite??

The reddit discussion divided on a point of fire — whether any of the fire in the video was actually burning aluminum or not.

Pro voices cited the whiteness of some of the flames, but I’m not sure we can rely on that without knowing more about the camera.

Anti voices seemed to believe the scene was nowhere near apocalyptic enough to involve burning aluminum.
posted by jamjam at 12:03 AM on June 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


Whoa, 18 seconds from the start of the fire to the whole roof collapsing. They used 10 seconds of that to go back for the cell phone. I always imagined in a fire I'd try to scoop up my phone and wallet on the way out, but I may have to rethink that. It's not worth a life in the end, no matter how annoying it would be to lose those things...
posted by starfishprime at 12:07 AM on June 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


There is no fire: there’s a fire. It’s like magic but not in a good way. This makes me want to avoid all factories, always, forever thanks to a brain that specializes in over generalizations.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:21 AM on June 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


I c what you did there

Unfortunately it wasn't some kind of clever linguistic or textual trick or in-joke, but just me sleepily submitting an FPP after midnight. Now mod-corrected.

Whoa, 18 seconds from the start of the fire to the whole roof collapsing.

This morning it's taken my toaster several times longer to make one slice of bread very slightly toasted. Obviously I should make my breakfast in a rickety ol' aluminium factory in future.
posted by Wordshore at 12:28 AM on June 11, 2022 [9 favorites]


(Imagining the MetaFilter mods watching the video, and noting that the sudden leak is analogous to someone making a particularly jarring comment in a thread on MetaTalk)
posted by Wordshore at 1:47 AM on June 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


I c what you did there

I thought that was a reference to automatronic. I've written SOPs for big industrial factories and there is usually a "OMG STOP!" big red button. It still would take a bit of reasoning to decide if you can hit the big red button before running the hell away.

Side note, it's only after like 40 years that the scar on the back of my hand has faded away. I was doing dangerous things and had a big drop of molten aluminum land on the back of my hand. A scar about the size of a nickel. I only recently noticed that I can't see it anymore. Sorta sad. Kids, don't try <redacted>.
posted by zengargoyle at 1:57 AM on June 11, 2022 [6 favorites]


New sockpuppet name: baseless speculation by encephalic meatpuppet piloted by an AI in the phone.

My baseless speculation: whoa! whatever stuff that was that was vented up, it didn't rain down the two workers but still had circumstance (flammable, temperature, oxidiser) to burn the roof.
posted by k3ninho at 2:53 AM on June 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Whoa, 18 seconds from the start of the fire to the whole roof collapsing.

On first watch:

9 seconds in: "That'll buff out."

26 seconds in: "No. No, it won't."
posted by Wordshore at 5:51 AM on June 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


Hydraulic fluid under high pressure is some scary shit when it goes where it shouldn't.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:07 AM on June 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


"We'll give you a new iPhone if you play russian roulette twice" does not become a good bet just because you beat the odds once.
posted by BrotherCaine at 10:02 AM on June 11, 2022


I've done some really small scale hot metal work like jewelry casting or melting aluminum and hot, liquid metal is terrifying even on small scales. Just casting small ingots of aluminum or copper on a bench top in small crucibles or molds can result in steam flash explosions that send hot, molten metal all over a shed or garage. Which is why you're supposed to pre-heat casting molds with a torch to dry them out, and you better be wearing full PPE if things go wrong.

I can barely imagine what it's like to be in the same building as a steel mill or aluminum smelter, an electric arc furnace or a hot roll/strip mill even when everything is ok and operating normally.

And I've watched I don't know how many hundreds of hours of video about these kinds of plants including when everything is fine or when things have gone pear-shaped.

Here's a steel mill exploding due to a "wet charge" which is what happens when there's too much water and moisture in a load of scrap steel.

Here is an electric arc furnace operating normally and it's still utterly terrifying. Those electrodes are gigantic and just about as big around as an adult human and maybe twice as tall.

I don't know who first thought of the concept of an EAF but they must have been a special kind of maniac. I imagine the thought process went something like "Hey, these coal or gas fired smelters are a huge pain in the ass. What if we took the concept of arc-welding metal but instead of little sticks for electrodes and maybe 50 to 100 amps, let's make the electrodes the size of tree trunks and we just ran ALL OF THE AMPS through it?"

And I'm trying to find this one good picture of the cooling pipes and structures of an EAF and I can't seem to find it, but if you take a look at this google image result you'll see a bunch of examples of how they keep an EAF from immediately melting along with the working charge. They basically make EAF crucibles and lids entirely out of pipes and run water through them. Which means if they spring a leak or burn through you end up with water and steam blasting into the charge and causing steam explosions.

Granted this is the same industry that casually uses or used sticks of dynamite to tap (open) the plugs on a furnace or crucible, or pumping pure oxygen and/or air into a furnace at hypersonic speeds in the appropriately named blast furnace.

Here is a small compilation of hot rolling steel mill "cobbles" selected more or less at random and there are hundreds of videos like this on YouTube. I find these especially terrifying. It's not like molten or red hot metal weighs any less than cold metal, and suddenly you have red hot danger noodles flying everywhere. And the mill workers need to clean that stuff up while it's hot because the longer it's left the more damage it's going to do and/or weld itself to expensive mill equipment.

Here is a compilation of slag pot dumps, including some accidents and explosions. Hot slag is basically man made lava because it's the waste minerals, oxides and residual metals left over after smelting.

Speaking of slag piles, I once explored an abandoned copper smelter. Which was all kinds of fun. But the slag pile - a mountain really - was something else entirely, and except for the breathable atmosphere it's more forbidding than a moonscape. Or even dormant lava field. Imagine something like 5-10 acres wide and a hundred feet tall or more of layered glass and molten stone with all of the sharpness of obsidian. You really wouldn't want to trip or take a tumble on it because it's basically as sharp as a mountain of broken glass. I remember trying to kneel or sit on it to take photos and even when being careful I ended up with small cuts and scrapes just touching it with anything but my shoes, which also got chewed up pretty good.

You can see this slag pile on Google Maps near Clarkedale or Cottonwood, Arizona. This was the smelter that was fed by the Jerome copper mines right up the mountain from Clarkedale. You can still see some of the concrete structures of the smelter scattered around, and they're huuuuge and were filled with bright green copper-tinged rainwater. I can also note that they've done a whole lot of work cleaning it up. When I visited there were more structures still there, as well as a huge debris field from a giant collapsed smoke stack which was also really strange to walk on and crawl over.

The mining and metal industry is wild. Everything modern that you know in your life from electricity, computers, home appliances, cars and even the gentle bicycle comes from and relies on these kinds of processes. Even plastics wouldn't be a thing without mining and metals because without it there wouldn't be oil wells or precision injection molding. The rebar in concrete structures, roads and bridges. The nails holding together a wood house. Even the screws and hinges in a pair of plastic glasses or a common USB cable to charge your phone would not exist without it.
posted by loquacious at 10:18 AM on June 11, 2022 [32 favorites]


The mining and metal industry is wild

You just won "Understatement of the Week award"
posted by DreamerFi at 10:32 AM on June 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


Film strip.

In high school chemistry c.1980 we were shown a series of 16mm films on various chemical elements which showed how they went from ore to finished products. I recall them as being pretty good and would like to watch them all again. I think this is the one for aluminum.

(I attended a weird small private high school that was on the campus of a university. We had access to a lot of university resources. Our chemistry class was held there, taught by a professor and we used their labs. In my senior year I took a college Fortran class in which we coded our programs on punch cards and submitted them to be run on a PDP-11.)
posted by neuron at 10:57 AM on June 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


Edit: that video I linked is from 1986.
posted by neuron at 11:03 AM on June 11, 2022


Aluminium extraction is totally insane.
First you wash the ore (bauxite) in caustic soda under pressure at over 100°C.
Then you take your, hopefully pure, alumina and melt it (even after adding synthetic cryolite to reduce it's melting point you're still looking at 1000°C here) and then you electrolyze the solution - 5V DC will do this although you'll need 100-300 kA (!!!).
This is why aluminium is so expensive despite being one of the most common elements in the Earth's crust. It's also why most aluminum extraction plants have their own large power station attached.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:24 AM on June 11, 2022 [2 favorites]


I don't know who first thought of the concept of an EAF but they must have been a special kind of maniac.

The maniac was Paul Héroult, and he invented the EAF in 1889. He also invented aluminium electrolysis (though credit is shared with this guy and his lesser-known sister). Dude just loved zapping things with huge amounts of electricity, I guess. As one does.

Wikipedia quotes his biographer:
Paul Héroult had none of the attributes of the traditional scholar. He was highstrung, unruly, occasionally hard and insolent; he did not fit the image of wise, disciplined men of science. He loved games, the company of women, travels by land and sea; he was a free spirit in an impetuous body. No comparison with the austere scientist, struggling with stubborn mysteries. His discoveries were not the result of long sleepless nights spent in a laboratory, or of complicated scientific demonstrations. Héroult loved life, and could not have borne such restrictions. Instead, his inventions appeared suddenly, out of the blue, a stroke of common sense, or of genius, sometimes during a lively game of billiards, his favorite pastime.
So, yeah. Total baller.

Compressed hydraulic fluid does not store energy.

While this is technically true, many large industrial hydraulic systems (I am most familiar with forging presses, but I think extrusion would be similar) involve accumulators, which definitely do store energy, sometimes quite a lot of it. They are analogous to a capacitor in an electrical system and "smooth out" demand from reciprocating systems on the source of hydraulic pressure, reducing wear and tear on pumps and allowing smaller pump motors to be used.
posted by Kadin2048 at 12:18 PM on June 11, 2022 [7 favorites]


Here is an electric arc furnace operating normally and it's still utterly terrifying.

Industrial machinery/process videos are one of the better genres for YouTube comments because it’s always a bunch of people who are like yeah I used to work on one of those, you can’t imagine what it’s like in person.
posted by atoxyl at 12:28 PM on June 11, 2022 [5 favorites]


The picking up the phone thing makes total sense to me - he jumps, runs away a bit, thinks "ohcrapohcrap I should call 000" and remembers where his phone is.
posted by pulposus at 1:04 PM on June 11, 2022 [3 favorites]


It's also why most aluminum extraction plants have their own large power station attached.

Aluminum is one of the most efficient ways to export electricity. Iceland has no bauxite but is still one of the main exporters of aluminum because it has such cheap hydro and geothermal electricity that it makes sense to ship the ore there and have it smelted.
posted by straight at 1:24 PM on June 11, 2022 [7 favorites]


On the molten metal front, RIP Henry Hall, keeper of the Eddystone Light who, in 1755, ingested 200g [exactly seven ounces, five drachms and eighteen grains] of molten roof lead while trying to extinguish a fire up above his head.
posted by BobTheScientist at 7:02 PM on June 11, 2022 [4 favorites]


I've done some really small scale hot metal work like jewelry casting or melting aluminum and hot, liquid metal is terrifying even on small scales.

I took metallurgy in High school. It was an hour and half class. If you came in early to fire the Bessimer, you could drink coffee and I could smoke under the hood vent.
It is a test in a few ways. our teacher was all Forged in Fire like
Gentleman, today you will breakdown these various donated Aluminum scraps, then melt them down and pour ignots. Your tear down time begins NOW. When it's all swirry and kicking above 1250° (which is low) you'd get an occasional flash but that's just paint or what not. the real test is pairing two people to pour and there was one guy in my class who is dating my ex-girlfriend, the teacher knew that, and paired us both together to pour ingots. clever and effective. Just lighting that furnace made me a bit nervous. Little to no market for ingot scrap even today unless it had a stamp which the school did. The copper about 5000 pounds, between scrap and ingots, is a Iike 15 grand today. I tallied/audited the "cage" about 5000 in copper, 12,000 in aluminum, 4000 in brass. That is scrap and ingots.ohhhh...hmm. The outfit is like heavy leather and the forge master from Oblivion it's about 120° around one at pour. splashing brass...Good band name.
posted by clavdivs at 8:36 PM on June 11, 2022 [5 favorites]


and Annealing is daunting really. I picked up this, mines 7th, 1941. Her Pickling used Sulphuric acid, nitric acid. sodium bisulfate does it today. That scale from base metal to jewelry is amazing.
posted by clavdivs at 8:53 PM on June 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


> The picking up the phone thing makes total sense to me - he jumps, runs away a bit, thinks "ohcrapohcrap I should call 000" and remembers where his phone is.

Isn't there a big red button for him to slap in case of emergency?
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:04 PM on June 16, 2022


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