Talk:1998 Esso Longford fire

Australia Mid‑importance

	Australia portal 1998 Esso Longford fire is within the scope of WikiProject Australia, which aims to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Australia and Australia-related topics. If you would like to participate, visit the project page.AustraliaWikipedia:WikiProject AustraliaTemplate:WikiProject AustraliaAustralia articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	Need help improving this article? Ask a Librarian^{What's this?} at the National Library of Australia.
	The Wikimedia Australia chapter can be contacted via email to helpwikimedia.org.au for non-editorial assistance.

Occupational Safety and Health Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Occupational Safety and Health, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to occupational safety and health on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Occupational Safety and HealthWikipedia:WikiProject Occupational Safety and HealthTemplate:WikiProject Occupational Safety and HealthOccupational Safety and Health articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

New article

Added this new article which was mentioned on the Australian Wikipedians' notice board. If any engineers are reading this and would like to proof read and fact check the technical section about the cause of the accident, please do! -- Canley 05:22, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Dude, thats an awesome article, I've added a link to the Coroner's report into the explosion which is still online, but I havn't actually read the report. Agnte 09:26, 19 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Canley, Any particular technicalities you think need checking? Anything you're not sure of? I can help. opal2.

Mostly the part about how the heat exchanger operates, I was quite vague as I really didn't understand it. --Canley 23:20, 3 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Description of the heat exchanger

GP905 was a shell and tube heat exchanger. This is a simple vessel with no moving parts - a horizontal cylindrical vessel, about 10 metres long and 1 metre in diameter.

A diagram of a typical shell and tube heat exchanger can be found in this Wikipedia article "Heat exhanger":

http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Heat_exchanger

The purpose of a heat exchanger is to transfer heat from a hot fluid to a cold fluid, without the two fluids mixing.

With GP905, the hot fluid was Rich Oil and the cold fluid was Lean Oil.

During normal operations, the Lean Oil entered the exchanger at 230C, and exited at 120C. The Rich Oil entered at 60C and exited at 100C. Thereby, heat was transferred from the hot Lean Oil to the cold Rich Oil.

The steel cylinder is called the "shell". Inside the shell is a bundle of about 100 steel tubes, running the length of the shell. Hence, it is called a "shell and tube" heat exchanger.

The hot Lean Oil flowed through the shell, passing over the tubes. The cold Rich Oil flowed throught the tubes. Heat was transferred from the hot Lean Oil, through the tubes, to the cold Rich Oil. The internal structure of the exchanger ensured that the the two fluids did not mix.

The shell was closed at each end by a circular plate bolted to a flange.

The heat exchanger was covered with insulation, apart from the pipe connections.

opal2

(I'm not used to Wikipedia - I'm fumblibg a bit with the mechanics of editing.)

Gas Plant One is mainly a natural gas plant

LPG is a side product. Gas Plant One was, and is, a producer of natural gas. In 1998, Longford was essentially the only supplier of natural gas to the state of Victoria.

Although Americans use the term "gas" for what we call "petrol", both countries have a common understanding of "natural gas". Using the term "natural gas" avoids any confusion.

From the article:"The liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is further extracted by means of a shell and tube heat exchanger". Condensate and ethane were removed from the gas feed in each absorber. Condensate, as liquid, fell into the absorber's sump & exited the absorber; ethane, as gas, was absorbed into lean oil in the absorber, converting the lean oil into rich oil; the rich oil fell into a collection tray & exited the absorber. The ethane was removed from the rich oil in the ROF section of the plant. LPG wasn't involved (LPG consists of hydrocarbons heavier than ethane, such as propane & butane).

The normal production process is seriously complicated and cannot be described in a few short paras.Klystron99 (talk) 09:22, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Needs a solid effort to produce a correct and complete (to the extent needed) of the normal production process. It is fundamental to understanding the accident. The accident was complex because the production process was complex. Klystron99 (talk) 10:23, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Esso Longford gas explosion. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120426001725/http://www.qrc.org.au/conference/_dbase_upl/03_spk003_Hopkins.pdf to http://www.qrc.org.au/conference/_dbase_upl/03_spk003_Hopkins.pdf

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:28, 26 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Explosion or not

The title and lead paragraph for this article refers to an explosion. But the section about the incident states that there was no explosion, it was a vapour cloud deflagration and jet fire. This apparent contradiction should be resolved (by someone who has more info on the actual event).--Pakaraki (talk) 02:19, 15 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It is correct that there was no explosion. The media always calls things that go bang an explosion. The term stuck. There was a rupture of the heat exchanger followed by a violent outburst of hydrocarbons. A vapour cloud formed and drifted towards gas-fired heaters. The front of the cloud ignited when it reached the heaters; a flame front burned back through the cloud at about walking pace; the hydrocarbons exiting the ruptured exchanger ignited and a jet fire developed. The fire impinged on pipes that collapsed adding more fuel to the fire. No explosion occurred. This is all based on the Royal Commission's report. Klystron99 (talk) 13:43, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It would be better if the article's title was "Esso Longford Gas Plant Accident". Klystron99 (talk) 14:03, 15 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If I can get support from at least one other contributor, I would like to request Wikipedia to change the page title to "Esso Longford gas plant accident 1998". As far as I can tell it isn't possible to edit the title or perhaps unwise as it might effect the entry in the WP database.

Any other contributors willing to support this change? Klystron99 (talk) 04:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Article class & importance

As at Aug 2023 the article is graded as Start-class & Low-importance. That's not good enough. I'd like to work to get it up to B-class & High-importance. Klystron99 (talk) 10:30, 17 August 2023 (UTC) grade. Klystron99 (talk) 10:27, 17 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have done improvements and upgraded to C-class. What do you think?JudeFawley (talk) 06:32, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]