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Injury from a Burning Rubber Gasket During Welding

An experienced welder was welding a joint in a large-diameter steel pipeline. Unbeknownst to him, the joint contained a rubber gasket. The gasket was used to seal the joint. The welder apparently was injured when he inhaled the fumes from the burning rubber gasket that was being heated by the welding process. APTECH was asked to reconstruct the incident. From the compounding recipe for the gasket, APTECH identified the likely chemical composition of the various raw materials, activators, antioxidants, pigments, accelerators and vulcanization agents used. APTECH engaged a laboratory to thermally decompose pieces of the gasket under non-oxidizing conditions and to analyze the gases evolved. Gasket heating rates were obtained from a series of transient heat transfer analyses. Using GC/MS analyses, numerous chemical species were identified, such as alkenes, alkynes, cyclic dienes, phenols, thiazoles, aromatics, ketones, alcohols, aldehydes, substituted naphthalenes, amids and amines. Several species were selected for more complex quantitative analyses. APTECH prepared a report of its findings.

Satish Almaula		Plant failure and root cause analysis; process and design engineering analysis; process technology development and testing; plant engineering, operations, maintenance and safety management; plant and process control system management.

Eric Sullivan, P.E.		Metallurgy, welding, failure analysis, fire and explosion investigations, equipment, piping.

Geoffrey Egan, Ph.D.		Engineering mechanics, welding engineering, stress and fatigue analysis, risk analysis, nondestructive examination, project management.

Steven Kohan, Ph.D.		Chemical engineering, refinery processes, toxic fume generation.

Steve Paterson		Metallurgy, welding, boiler pressure part and machinery failure analysis.