Reza A., Ibrahim Z., Vaitekunas T., 2013, Investigation and Analysis of an Explosion at the GOEX Black Powder Manufacturing Facility, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 31, 475-480.
An accidental explosion at the GOEX powder manufacturing facility in Minden, Louisiana destroyed a section of the plant on June 7, 2011. The plant is the last black powder manufacturing facility in North America, producing product for a wide range of customers. The explosion originated in the corning mill where pressed black powder cakes were fed through an aluminium worm screw into a feed hopper and then moved along four sets of rolls and sieved shakers to reduce the size to the desired granular dimensions. The explosion fragmented the screw worm and hopper and destroyed the corning mill structure. Subsequent examination of recovered fragments of the screw worm suggested that the incident was likely triggered when a piece of quartz that had contaminated the batch impacted the aluminium worm. The friction generated enough heat to initiate the explosion. An alternate mechanism that could not be ruled out was frictional heating due to a fragmentation failure of the aluminium worm. Due to the nature of this product, it might not be possible to eliminate such events during the corning operation. However, based on our findings from this investigation, the authors have developed recommendations on how to minimize the frequency of such incidents.
