8 ms·

That Methyl Methacrylate Tank

432 points by nooks 5mo ago

HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago
When this is all over, when they peel the metal tank away, will they have a gigantic clear block of material?
- cryzinger 5mo ago
  Ooh, like when a bottle of Krazy Glue dries out? I kinda hope so...
  - xnx 5mo ago
    Had to look that up. Pretty cool. Would've expected it to be more cloudy. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildyinteresting/comments/1ogb2k3/my_super_glue_dried_to_the_shape_of_its_bottle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildyinteresting/comments/1ogb2k3/m...
    - gus_massa 5mo ago
      I expect something with a lot of small bubbles and cracks, also it also overheated and got weird decomposition and reactions, something like a overcooked/toasted meal. Reusing a comment that I made in a previous thread: For comparison, there is a nice video by NileRed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 He is making Bakelite that is a type of plastic. It's a tiny amount, in a lab, on purpose and he may make a few attempts. Anyway it overheat and instead of a nice piece of plastic he got a nasty block of foam with burned plastic. No imagine a huge tank of a similar chemistry reaction.
    - codazoda 5mo ago
      A contractor showed me how to fix dents in granite with superglue. It’s totally clear. The trick is to scrape it with a razor blade at a 90 degree angle (strait horizontal). The imperfections become nearly invisible.
      - MisterTea 5mo ago
        I've been told this is a cheap way to fix small windshield cracks. Never tried it but sounds like it would work for the small spider sized and shaped cracks from small rock impacts.
        singleshot_ 5mo ago
        The expensive way is superglue plus a little suction cup to evacuate the air, and a razor blade.
        tjohns 5mo ago
        This is basically what the glass repair kits sold at auto parts stores are. (They also include a suction cup with syringe, to vacuum any air bubbles out.)
        coryrc 5mo ago
        And, bringing this topic full circle, the chemical in those kits is methyl methacrylate!
        dlcarrier 5mo ago
        The rule of thumb is that if the damage fits under a US quarter, it'll work for sure, and if it fits under a dollar bill, it's worth a try.
      - dlcarrier 5mo ago
        This is also how glass chip repair works. If the polymer has a close enough index of refraction to the glass, it's invisible.
  - bombcar 5mo ago
    The KRAGLE!
  - devilbunny 5mo ago
    Note that it doesn’t dry out; it polymerizes, and the reaction is catalyzed by water, which is why cyanoacrylate glues will stick your fingertips together instantly but will not as rapidly stick plastics or metals together.
    - somat 5mo ago
      There are superglue(CA) accelerators sold, is that just a big scam? Because as far as I can tell a spray bottle with water works just as well.
      - TheJoeMan 5mo ago
        I think Polyolefin Primer (Permabond POP) is magical in what it can superglue. Beautiful chemistry allowing something like Teflon or steel to be glued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yz8OqThJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yz8OqThJk
      - imp0cat 5mo ago
        Not a scam. Also, your breath might help in a pinch (it's humid).
      - whizzter 5mo ago
        Water but it's a bit of hit and miss that can turn soggy, better is bicarbonate that triggers are more or less instant reaction (often in baking powder in a pinch, but that's mostly a waste compared to just bicarb). Often if one wants to make something "larger", dropping superglue, adding bicarb with a silt, blowing away and dropping another layer works fairly well (it's a bit of a brittle but still quite hard mass that is created quickly).
        wartywhoa23 5mo ago
        I've rebuilt my old laptop's hinges this way, building up little by little, almost 3d printing crudely by hand. Then at some point I realized that I overdid it! Easy-peasy, a file and sandpaper to the rescue, I thought. Aand.. I spent x3 more time shaving off the excess than building it! It's super tough.
- itishappy 5mo ago
  https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41428-018-0142-7/MediaObjects/41428_2018_142_Fig1_HTML.png https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image... So... maybe?
  - fuzzfactor 5mo ago
    A couple weeks ago when they called me back to the lab the supervisor had one of the clear polymer disks on their desk that had formed in a pint sample bottle that was about half full. The sample recycling operator came across the occasional one that had polymerized, over months of identical ambient storage to the other bottles in the case which could still be handled as liquids. Broke it out of the bottle and brought it into the office, where it was completely odorless and sitting there like a promotional acrylic paperweight with nothing embedded inside to promote :) If this tank has a giant disk of clear acrylic at the bottom, it "might" be unprecedented to remove it intact and turn it into a fairly sizable lens if possible. If not clear, maybe even a mirror of some kind anyway. Although there is probably some internal piping from inside the tank, embedded for display purposes primarily at this point ;)
- CGMthrowaway 5mo ago
  World's largest Outstanding Service Award.
- dboreham 5mo ago
  Transparent Aluminum
  - EA-3167 5mo ago
    Oh we have that too, it's used as high end window armor in some armored vehicles, it's called AlON (Aluminum OxyNitride). It's amazing stuff.
    - danbruc 5mo ago
      Also [synthetic] sapphire [1] is just aluminium oxide. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire
robocat 5mo ago
Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in? After a big earthquake you don't want to have to also deal with other emergencies (à la Fukushima). Aside: One good side-effect of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake being so horrific is that it stopped the self-obsessed whinging in my city (Christchurch was still trying to recover from an earthquake).
- largbae 5mo ago
  Based on the article, the inhibitor chemicals _are_ the passive protection system, they just can't be perfect because too much of that stuff ruins the purpose for having the chemical in the first place.
  - itishappy 5mo ago
    It can actually make it more dangerous in some ways. When you go to use it, too much inhibitor and the conditions needed to start the reaction will start to get wild, so the reaction will occur faster once started. > The use of high levels of inhibitor can cause the monomer system temperature to far exceed the onset temperature of thermal polymerization under external heating. Once the inhibitor is exhausted, the thermal runaway reaction proceeds at an elevated temperature with a substantial reaction rate and very little reactant/monomer consumption. Source: This fascinating paper linked to by fuzzfactor in yesterday's (edit: 3 days ago, lol) thread: https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerization-reactions-inhibitor-modeling---styrene-and-butyl-acrylate-incidents-case-studies.pdf?sfvrsn=993dc4d4_25 https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerizati... The comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245
- dan_sbl 5mo ago
  I believe they tried to inject some chemicals to slow the reaction, but the pump and/or valves failed and clogged.
  - robocat 5mo ago
    That is active. Something passive could be submerging the tank in a pool of water (also good for proving spill containment won't leak).
ErroneousBosh 5mo ago
What the...?! I was literally just this afternoon telling someone about TIWWW and posting them some favourites.
h335ian 5mo ago
By the miraculous grace of God, a crack allowed pressure to bleed & enabled our engine company to prevent thermal runaway. A BLEVE was the projected outcome, a firefighters worst nightmare - see the Kingman BLEVE - https://www.cityofkingman.gov/government/departments-a-h/fire-department/bleve-memorial#ad-image-0 https://www.cityofkingman.gov/government/departments-a-h/fir...
- decimalenough 5mo ago
  BLEVE = Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion
  - _whiteCaps_ 5mo ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo MythBusters have a good BLEVE episode. Apparently Adam Savage's favourite explosion.
    - dralley 5mo ago
      Typically BLEVE is used in a petrochemical context, where the hot "boiling liquid, expanding vapor" ignites on contact with oxygen.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 5mo ago
        A BLEVE does not need oxygen to become an explosion. The explosion occurs with the rupture of a tank (that has been heated, increasing the internal pressure and thus increasing the boiling point of the liquid inside, so that it remains liquid). This causes a loss of rapid loss of pressure, which in turn rapidly decreases the boiling point of the liquid, thus causing a sizable part of the liquid to almost immediately boil and cause an expanding "cloud" of gas. When this occurs, you have an explosion that can propel parts of a steel propane tank up to 1/2 mile (at least).
        fc417fc802 5mo ago
Waterluvian 5mo ago
I had wondered the whole time why they didn’t just pierce it with an AM rifle. Would that not have been better than a random partial failure via a crack? Genuinely open question. I don’t know anything about stuff.
- ac29 5mo ago
  The spark could have caused an explosion.
  - cogogo 5mo ago
    I read that was the primary concern and wondered about drilling/piercing techniques that could avoid a spark. Spraying water sounds like the dumbest one but some kind of mud applied or something. CNC machines don’t seem to be light shows but i know very little.
    - gpm 5mo ago
      My "I have no clue how this works" proposal to minimize the chance of sparking would be to re-purpose a waterjet cutter...
      - Waterluvian 5mo ago
        Okay now hear me out. What about we introduce more chemicals and eat through the tank with acid?
- kotaKat 5mo ago
  I guess that begs the next point though - the high pressure system inside would want to violently vent out to the low pressure system outside through the relatively tiny hole. Delta P... when it's got you... it's got you.
- ajb 5mo ago
  Not a direct answer, but there is a standard code for what actions emergency services should take, and the code[1] for this stuff is 3YE, which means "Use foam or dry agent, substance reacts violently/is explosive, BA [breathing apparatus] use is essential, evacuate vicinity, contain spill." So there must be some reason not to let the stuff out. [1] This is the hazchem code. I think the US uses a different system. A list is here: https://www.ricardo.com/media/radn55jg/dangerous-goods-emergency-action-codes-2025.pdf https://www.ricardo.com/media/radn55jg/dangerous-goods-emerg...
KennyBlanken 5mo ago
> The immediate danger seems to abated, fortunately, The "it will explode leveling a couple city blocks" danger seems to be abated, but instead it's spraying an insanely toxic chemical out into the open, which will likely have health repercussions for residents for decades? Thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals don't just disappear.
- gus_massa 5mo ago
  It probably polymerized completely and it's a giant block of nasty looking solid plastic, that perhaps can be lifted with a crane (with some support, in case it has cracks or something). In some plastics the monomer is toxic, but the polymerized form is safe. (I think it was use for windshields for planes, so once polymerized it was probably safe to touch at least.) In this case it was an uncontrolled reaction so I'm not sure if someone knows the exact current composition of the goo, so I strongly recommend to avoid licking it.
  - amluto 5mo ago
    > In some plastics the monomer is toxic, but the polymerized form is safe. This is common. Isocyanates are a common example — isocyanate monomers are nasty, and the very light ones are very nasty. They’re used to make polyurethane, polyurea and such, which are quite nontoxic in polymerized form. In applications where the unreacted isocyanates are used by anyone other than professionals (e.g. two component varnishes), the manufacturer may go out of their way to use more expensive but less toxic variants.
  - compass_copium 5mo ago
    Correct, PMMA is completely harmless. MMA is an incredibly common adhesive, and is in probably a dozen things in the room you are sitting in in its polymerized form.
- amluto 5mo ago
  > insanely toxic Some quick searching suggests that it’s toxic but not even close to “insanely toxic”. And it’s not persistent in the environment. If you want a genuinely nasty chemical, check out methyl isocyanate, which is some two orders of magnitude more acutely toxic.
copypaper 5mo ago
What a disaster and complete failure on the local government in the way they handled this situation. If we ever get hit by an earthquake or other larger disaster, it's safe to assume we're all on our own. Also, as someone affected by this, it has been extremely frustrating getting updates via xitter. Do we really have no other options?
- __david__ 5mo ago
  > What a disaster and complete failure on the local government in the way they handled this situation. Can you expand on that? It seems like there wasn't a lot they could do once the tank started leaking.
- Abh1Works 5mo ago
  vague post
- _carbyau_ 5mo ago
  > it has been extremely frustrating getting updates via xitter. Do we really have no other options? It is amazing how the modern world has a webpage for every organisation but they can't bloody update it usefully and use a random platform (Xitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, facebook) instead.
itishappy 5mo ago
Here's a fascinating postmortem analysis of two similar incidents, Styrene and Butyl Acrylate: https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerization-reactions-inhibitor-modeling---styrene-and-butyl-acrylate-incidents-case-studies.pdf?sfvrsn=993dc4d4_25 https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerizati... From fuzzfactor's comment with lots of other great info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245
- fuzzfactor 5mo ago
  Now I'm thinking that a weak part of the tank gave way at one of the lesser welds on this non-pressure vessel, quite early and in the top part of the tank well above the liquid level. When you stand on top of a big tank, a lot of them do flex quite a bit. Physical pressure must have increased somehow in a way that could not be relieved without rupture. IIRC there was some report of a "gas leak" to begin with and that could very well have been it. I can only imagine what it's like to be one of the shift operators down there on the pavement around the tanks and pipes on a daily basis, in their flame-retardant coveralls and hardhats. Based on my vivid experience working with similar operators as I took official samples from tanks usually located in much bigger tank farms. MMA smells so sharp that any leakage from a valve or pipe fitting gets attention much more so than other flammable liquids, for instance things like paint removers, alcohol or acetone which smell very faint by comparison. I expect that the workers had gotten accustomed to a fairly clean air environment without serious toxicity levels, and would estimate that a leak of about 1 drop per minute from a flange would be easily identified and fixed. Not only to keep the neighbors from complaining, but to keep the workers from gagging when they walk closer to that location. If the first sign of trouble was physical tank bulging and/or suddenly stinking up the whole place with lots of MMA vapor (like from an upper tank rupture) when there is no sign of leakage on the ground, that pretty much qualifies as a "gas leak". Once the smell was no longer prominent, I would say that polymerization was well underway and there was not as much free monomer available to build up more pressure or even evaporate very much after that. If there's warm liquid MMA open to the atmosphere, you will smell it downwind. It might be a stretch to say that "nature takes its course" when synthetic monomers spontaneously polymerize like this, but that's what some of them do best that sets them apart. From what I understand, in the uninhibited pure monomer it doesn't take that many PPM of monomer molecules to become "activated" in some way before the chain reaction of them with remaining molecules eventually accelerates to completion. Which may be why such a low concentration of inhibitor works so well, but inhibitor must be well-dispersed within the liquid and there must be enough circulation to avoid local depletion of the inhibitor due to stagnant contact with as yet unidentified unexpected initiators. Not only should it be easy to get a random 1 liter sample from a tank (of such non-viscous material) at any time, the single sample should ideally be highly representative of the entire tank contents. Due to the way the liquid is handled in bulk going in & out of the tank, as well as any additional circulation to insure good mixing of incoming cargo, or after boosting inhibitor amounts when only a few carefully measured pounds or kilos of the concentrated inhibitor is dumped into the bulk monomer to keep it from going below spec. The inhibitors have been selected to be very strong and effective at what they do so it doesn't require a high concentration, and the downstream processors can more easily overcome the inhibitor effect and produce plastics using different and milder polymerization initiator techniques when there is not an excess of inhibitor. Once it gets polymerizing past that minuscule little inhibitor, from that point it's like there is no inhibitor at all. So there is some possibility that this is a fairly worst-case runaway polymerization event where the full amount of caution was rightfully warranted. Even though it would have to be considered fairly benign compared to a whole tank of the liquid monomer dispersing through the neighborhoods, or going up in a fireball, which is always a risk anyway :\ Under storage, it really is tremendous force that the inhibitor is holding back, considering how badly outnumbered it is by the 99.9% of everything else in the tank that wants to spontaneously react with itself otherwise. When the inhibitor is only about 20 PPM, which in percent is 0.0020%, in these cases percent by weight. IOW 20 lbs of MEHQ crystals dissolved in every million lbs of MMA liquid, or in metric 20 kilos of inhibitor for every million kilos of cargo. Now usually the lowest inhibitor concentration will be at the chemical plant that produces the monomers, and it may go into bulk storage the same way when fresh material is moving through the system adequately. From there, vessels, rail cars and trailers often have different amounts of additional inhibitor added in order to boost levels according to purchase agreements of the different industrial consumers. Often by contractors such as companies I have worked for who store the inhibitor concentrate as agents for the client, and can sample industrial tanks & test in the lab to routinely determine inhibitor concentration. Then carefully measure according to requirements and be the third party that certifies the new concentration after our field operator physically adds the additional dose to the tank. For something like vessels and rail cars you just can't expect their cargo samples to accurately reflect a recently boosted inhibitor value, the small amount of inhibitor concentrate won't be adequately mixed with the rest of the bulk monomer before the ship leaves the dock or the train leaves the terminal. So it has to be certified by careful physical addition while being supported by good lab data to begin with. You expect lab readings to match the certificate after the ship gets overseas or the rail car gets across the country. Now measuring low PPM is not always easy but you get better after a while. Much better for me because I got to start doing it my own way as soon as I could, after first establishing as many of the predecessor techniques as possible for reference, but people still wanted more reliable results and so did I since the beginning. Ever since then, doing the continuous improvement thing for more decades than you normally get. Things I will work with, repeatedly ;)
buildbot 5mo ago
Meanwhile in Washington, an unknown number of people where killed today in a paper mill “white liquor” explosion today…: https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/26/longview-chemical-explosion-nippon/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/26/longview-chemical-exp...
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- dakolli 5mo ago
  And for what, $25.00 bucks an hour? We need to take back production.
  - deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
photochemsyn 5mo ago
Reminder that the US Chemical Safety Board does great investigations into these kinds of accidents. Here’s a famous one from 2007 involving methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (a gasoline additive) at T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville Florida. The CSB has a long record of producing great investigative videos without any partisan or legal bias, as the one shown here demonstrates: https://www.csb.gov/t2-laboratories-inc-reactive-chemical-explosion/ https://www.csb.gov/t2-laboratories-inc-reactive-chemical-ex... This agency is the subject of a budget war between the current executive and Congress, with the former trying to cut its budget and the Congress just restoring its budget, so not sure if it will be doing a report on Garden Grove: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/congress-rescues-industry-watchdog-earmarked-for-closure-by-trump-administration/4022869.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/congress-rescues-industr... See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904017
- tardedmeme 5mo ago
  I thought Trump defunded them last year? It was big news at the time.
  - pfdietz 5mo ago
    I had thought that too, but the funding was kept there by Congress.
bigmattystyles 5mo ago
Tangent but there's a great Sublime song titled `Garden Grove`. Looks like they made a modern video for it that presumably shows a lot of Garden Grove. Or it could be Long Beach, I don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpSo_zj0UQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpSo_zj0UQw
parpfish 5mo ago
i always suspected that chemistry was up to something, but never thought it'd be behind something like this.
GeorgeWoff25 5mo ago
This reminds me of the old adage, every system is secure until someone actually tries to use it.
grunkolsky 5mo ago
[dead]
muyuu 5mo ago
context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak
Schlagbohrer 5mo ago
> "I look forward to the eventual incident report for the root causes of this one - assuming that we do such things any more here in the #$%@! Golden Age in which we find ourselves - because that, too, will make things safer going forwards. One hopes." If there's no after action report, we'll never get a good episode of Well There's Your Problem on this incident, and that would be a loss for both engineering and podcasting ;-(
- khuey 5mo ago
  Given the disruption this has caused in Orange County I would expect to eventually get a slick US Chemical Safety Board video on it.
  - EvanAnderson 5mo ago
    I had to go look-- I thought the CSB got defunded and closed. Luckily it appears it did not (though not for lack of trying). John Childgey's "Causality" podcast[0] covers stuff like this, and I'm sure he'll eventually cover it. [0] https://engineered.network/causality/ https://engineered.network/causality/
trelane 5mo ago
Fascinating! Only tangentially related: I've definitely heard of PMMA, and didn't realize it was plexiglass! It's used regularly in semiconductor fabrication. https://kayakuam.com/product/structsure/pmma-positive-resists https://kayakuam.com/product/structsure/pmma-positive-resist... (also waaaay down on the list of uses at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate) but I thought that first link was clearer. Look for "In semiconductor research and industry, PMMA aids as a resist in the electron beam lithography process.")
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
felooboolooomba 5mo ago
Being an armchair expert, I wondered if they couldn't have flown a quadcopter with a small drilling machine and drill a hole on the top to relive pressure?
- humanpotato 5mo ago
  First, there's probably a pressure relief system already on the tank. The problem is that is analogous to drilling a hole in a pressure cooker, it's either going to rupture the tank entirely, or blast the contents into the air. Also curious where you would get a "quadcopter with a small drilling machine" with a couple hours' notice; even if you had one, it would be hard to maintain a position at one exact spot, and much of the lift energy would be expended in the torque reaction of the drill.
  - PaulHoule 5mo ago
    I am seeing papers go by from Chinese researchers who are interested in things like using drones to do maintenance on sea platforms and they'd definitely be interested in attaching drills to drones and the like.
- SoftTalker 5mo ago
  All process tanks I've seen have various cleanout hatches, drain valves, pressure relief blowoff valves... even your water heater has these. Not sure about this tank in particular and obviously there were no easy answers in this particular event, but hopefully lessons will be learned.
- mvkel 5mo ago
  It seems like the issue wasn't the pressure so much, but the temperature. The contents were supposed to be stored at 50 degrees. The thermometer for the tank was reading 100 degrees, but nobody knew what the actual temperature was, because the thermometer's maximum reading was 100. So the challenge was to figure out how to cool things down (which would relieve the pressure in turn)
- tkel 5mo ago
  I don't know about a hole, but the reason why the tank didn't rupture, is because a crack was discovered, which relieved the pressure. They got lucky.
poooka 5mo ago
Whenever I read anything by this guy I just think of George Creel and his Committee on Public Information. He's a throwback.
ck2 5mo ago
Derek Lowe is always such a great read, one of the few good things I discovered during the pandemic
ykl 5mo ago
Ha, from the title alone I was hoping for a Derek Lowe article, and it is!

432 points by nooks 5mo ago

HoldOnAMinute 5mo ago

When this is all over, when they peel the metal tank away, will they have a gigantic clear block of material?

cryzinger 5mo ago
Ooh, like when a bottle of Krazy Glue dries out? I kinda hope so...
- xnx 5mo ago
  Had to look that up. Pretty cool. Would've expected it to be more cloudy. https://www.reddit.com/r/mildyinteresting/comments/1ogb2k3/my_super_glue_dried_to_the_shape_of_its_bottle/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mildyinteresting/comments/1ogb2k3/m...
  - gus_massa 5mo ago
    I expect something with a lot of small bubbles and cracks, also it also overheated and got weird decomposition and reactions, something like a overcooked/toasted meal. Reusing a comment that I made in a previous thread: For comparison, there is a nice video by NileRed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phNLecfyWS8 He is making Bakelite that is a type of plastic. It's a tiny amount, in a lab, on purpose and he may make a few attempts. Anyway it overheat and instead of a nice piece of plastic he got a nasty block of foam with burned plastic. No imagine a huge tank of a similar chemistry reaction.
  - codazoda 5mo ago
    A contractor showed me how to fix dents in granite with superglue. It’s totally clear. The trick is to scrape it with a razor blade at a 90 degree angle (strait horizontal). The imperfections become nearly invisible.
    - MisterTea 5mo ago
      I've been told this is a cheap way to fix small windshield cracks. Never tried it but sounds like it would work for the small spider sized and shaped cracks from small rock impacts.
      - singleshot_ 5mo ago
        The expensive way is superglue plus a little suction cup to evacuate the air, and a razor blade.
      - tjohns 5mo ago
        This is basically what the glass repair kits sold at auto parts stores are. (They also include a suction cup with syringe, to vacuum any air bubbles out.)
        coryrc 5mo ago
        And, bringing this topic full circle, the chemical in those kits is methyl methacrylate!
      - dlcarrier 5mo ago
        The rule of thumb is that if the damage fits under a US quarter, it'll work for sure, and if it fits under a dollar bill, it's worth a try.
    - dlcarrier 5mo ago
      This is also how glass chip repair works. If the polymer has a close enough index of refraction to the glass, it's invisible.
- bombcar 5mo ago
  The KRAGLE!
- devilbunny 5mo ago
  Note that it doesn’t dry out; it polymerizes, and the reaction is catalyzed by water, which is why cyanoacrylate glues will stick your fingertips together instantly but will not as rapidly stick plastics or metals together.
  - somat 5mo ago
    There are superglue(CA) accelerators sold, is that just a big scam? Because as far as I can tell a spray bottle with water works just as well.
    - TheJoeMan 5mo ago
      I think Polyolefin Primer (Permabond POP) is magical in what it can superglue. Beautiful chemistry allowing something like Teflon or steel to be glued. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yz8OqThJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9yz8OqThJk
    - imp0cat 5mo ago
      Not a scam. Also, your breath might help in a pinch (it's humid).
    - whizzter 5mo ago
      Water but it's a bit of hit and miss that can turn soggy, better is bicarbonate that triggers are more or less instant reaction (often in baking powder in a pinch, but that's mostly a waste compared to just bicarb). Often if one wants to make something "larger", dropping superglue, adding bicarb with a silt, blowing away and dropping another layer works fairly well (it's a bit of a brittle but still quite hard mass that is created quickly).
      - wartywhoa23 5mo ago
        I've rebuilt my old laptop's hinges this way, building up little by little, almost 3d printing crudely by hand. Then at some point I realized that I overdid it! Easy-peasy, a file and sandpaper to the rescue, I thought. Aand.. I spent x3 more time shaving off the excess than building it! It's super tough.
itishappy 5mo ago
https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41428-018-0142-7/MediaObjects/41428_2018_142_Fig1_HTML.png https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image... So... maybe?
- fuzzfactor 5mo ago
  A couple weeks ago when they called me back to the lab the supervisor had one of the clear polymer disks on their desk that had formed in a pint sample bottle that was about half full. The sample recycling operator came across the occasional one that had polymerized, over months of identical ambient storage to the other bottles in the case which could still be handled as liquids. Broke it out of the bottle and brought it into the office, where it was completely odorless and sitting there like a promotional acrylic paperweight with nothing embedded inside to promote :) If this tank has a giant disk of clear acrylic at the bottom, it "might" be unprecedented to remove it intact and turn it into a fairly sizable lens if possible. If not clear, maybe even a mirror of some kind anyway. Although there is probably some internal piping from inside the tank, embedded for display purposes primarily at this point ;)
CGMthrowaway 5mo ago
World's largest Outstanding Service Award.
dboreham 5mo ago
Transparent Aluminum
- EA-3167 5mo ago
  Oh we have that too, it's used as high end window armor in some armored vehicles, it's called AlON (Aluminum OxyNitride). It's amazing stuff.
  - danbruc 5mo ago
    Also [synthetic] sapphire [1] is just aluminium oxide. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapphire

robocat 5mo ago

Why wouldn't there be passive protection systems designed in? After a big earthquake you don't want to have to also deal with other emergencies (à la Fukushima). Aside: One good side-effect of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake being so horrific is that it stopped the self-obsessed whinging in my city (Christchurch was still trying to recover from an earthquake).

largbae 5mo ago
Based on the article, the inhibitor chemicals _are_ the passive protection system, they just can't be perfect because too much of that stuff ruins the purpose for having the chemical in the first place.
- itishappy 5mo ago
  It can actually make it more dangerous in some ways. When you go to use it, too much inhibitor and the conditions needed to start the reaction will start to get wild, so the reaction will occur faster once started. > The use of high levels of inhibitor can cause the monomer system temperature to far exceed the onset temperature of thermal polymerization under external heating. Once the inhibitor is exhausted, the thermal runaway reaction proceeds at an elevated temperature with a substantial reaction rate and very little reactant/monomer consumption. Source: This fascinating paper linked to by fuzzfactor in yesterday's (edit: 3 days ago, lol) thread: https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerization-reactions-inhibitor-modeling---styrene-and-butyl-acrylate-incidents-case-studies.pdf?sfvrsn=993dc4d4_25 https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerizati... The comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245
dan_sbl 5mo ago
I believe they tried to inject some chemicals to slow the reaction, but the pump and/or valves failed and clogged.
- robocat 5mo ago
  That is active. Something passive could be submerging the tank in a pool of water (also good for proving spill containment won't leak).

ErroneousBosh 5mo ago

What the...?! I was literally just this afternoon telling someone about TIWWW and posting them some favourites.

h335ian 5mo ago

By the miraculous grace of God, a crack allowed pressure to bleed & enabled our engine company to prevent thermal runaway. A BLEVE was the projected outcome, a firefighters worst nightmare - see the Kingman BLEVE - https://www.cityofkingman.gov/government/departments-a-h/fire-department/bleve-memorial#ad-image-0 https://www.cityofkingman.gov/government/departments-a-h/fir...

decimalenough 5mo ago
BLEVE = Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion
- _whiteCaps_ 5mo ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGWmONHipVo MythBusters have a good BLEVE episode. Apparently Adam Savage's favourite explosion.
  - dralley 5mo ago
    Typically BLEVE is used in a petrochemical context, where the hot "boiling liquid, expanding vapor" ignites on contact with oxygen.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5mo ago
      A BLEVE does not need oxygen to become an explosion. The explosion occurs with the rupture of a tank (that has been heated, increasing the internal pressure and thus increasing the boiling point of the liquid inside, so that it remains liquid). This causes a loss of rapid loss of pressure, which in turn rapidly decreases the boiling point of the liquid, thus causing a sizable part of the liquid to almost immediately boil and cause an expanding "cloud" of gas. When this occurs, you have an explosion that can propel parts of a steel propane tank up to 1/2 mile (at least).
      - fc417fc802 5mo ago

Waterluvian 5mo ago

I had wondered the whole time why they didn’t just pierce it with an AM rifle. Would that not have been better than a random partial failure via a crack? Genuinely open question. I don’t know anything about stuff.

ac29 5mo ago
The spark could have caused an explosion.
- cogogo 5mo ago
  I read that was the primary concern and wondered about drilling/piercing techniques that could avoid a spark. Spraying water sounds like the dumbest one but some kind of mud applied or something. CNC machines don’t seem to be light shows but i know very little.
  - gpm 5mo ago
    My "I have no clue how this works" proposal to minimize the chance of sparking would be to re-purpose a waterjet cutter...
    - Waterluvian 5mo ago
      Okay now hear me out. What about we introduce more chemicals and eat through the tank with acid?
kotaKat 5mo ago
I guess that begs the next point though - the high pressure system inside would want to violently vent out to the low pressure system outside through the relatively tiny hole. Delta P... when it's got you... it's got you.
ajb 5mo ago
Not a direct answer, but there is a standard code for what actions emergency services should take, and the code[1] for this stuff is 3YE, which means "Use foam or dry agent, substance reacts violently/is explosive, BA [breathing apparatus] use is essential, evacuate vicinity, contain spill." So there must be some reason not to let the stuff out. [1] This is the hazchem code. I think the US uses a different system. A list is here: https://www.ricardo.com/media/radn55jg/dangerous-goods-emergency-action-codes-2025.pdf https://www.ricardo.com/media/radn55jg/dangerous-goods-emerg...

KennyBlanken 5mo ago

> The immediate danger seems to abated, fortunately, The "it will explode leveling a couple city blocks" danger seems to be abated, but instead it's spraying an insanely toxic chemical out into the open, which will likely have health repercussions for residents for decades? Thousands of gallons of toxic chemicals don't just disappear.

gus_massa 5mo ago
It probably polymerized completely and it's a giant block of nasty looking solid plastic, that perhaps can be lifted with a crane (with some support, in case it has cracks or something). In some plastics the monomer is toxic, but the polymerized form is safe. (I think it was use for windshields for planes, so once polymerized it was probably safe to touch at least.) In this case it was an uncontrolled reaction so I'm not sure if someone knows the exact current composition of the goo, so I strongly recommend to avoid licking it.
- amluto 5mo ago
  > In some plastics the monomer is toxic, but the polymerized form is safe. This is common. Isocyanates are a common example — isocyanate monomers are nasty, and the very light ones are very nasty. They’re used to make polyurethane, polyurea and such, which are quite nontoxic in polymerized form. In applications where the unreacted isocyanates are used by anyone other than professionals (e.g. two component varnishes), the manufacturer may go out of their way to use more expensive but less toxic variants.
- compass_copium 5mo ago
  Correct, PMMA is completely harmless. MMA is an incredibly common adhesive, and is in probably a dozen things in the room you are sitting in in its polymerized form.
amluto 5mo ago
> insanely toxic Some quick searching suggests that it’s toxic but not even close to “insanely toxic”. And it’s not persistent in the environment. If you want a genuinely nasty chemical, check out methyl isocyanate, which is some two orders of magnitude more acutely toxic.

copypaper 5mo ago

What a disaster and complete failure on the local government in the way they handled this situation. If we ever get hit by an earthquake or other larger disaster, it's safe to assume we're all on our own. Also, as someone affected by this, it has been extremely frustrating getting updates via xitter. Do we really have no other options?

__david__ 5mo ago
> What a disaster and complete failure on the local government in the way they handled this situation. Can you expand on that? It seems like there wasn't a lot they could do once the tank started leaking.
Abh1Works 5mo ago
vague post
_carbyau_ 5mo ago
> it has been extremely frustrating getting updates via xitter. Do we really have no other options? It is amazing how the modern world has a webpage for every organisation but they can't bloody update it usefully and use a random platform (Xitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, facebook) instead.

itishappy 5mo ago

Here's a fascinating postmortem analysis of two similar incidents, Styrene and Butyl Acrylate: https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerization-reactions-inhibitor-modeling---styrene-and-butyl-acrylate-incidents-case-studies.pdf?sfvrsn=993dc4d4_25 https://iomosaic.com/docs/default-source/papers/polymerizati... From fuzzfactor's comment with lots of other great info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48252245

fuzzfactor 5mo ago
Now I'm thinking that a weak part of the tank gave way at one of the lesser welds on this non-pressure vessel, quite early and in the top part of the tank well above the liquid level. When you stand on top of a big tank, a lot of them do flex quite a bit. Physical pressure must have increased somehow in a way that could not be relieved without rupture. IIRC there was some report of a "gas leak" to begin with and that could very well have been it. I can only imagine what it's like to be one of the shift operators down there on the pavement around the tanks and pipes on a daily basis, in their flame-retardant coveralls and hardhats. Based on my vivid experience working with similar operators as I took official samples from tanks usually located in much bigger tank farms. MMA smells so sharp that any leakage from a valve or pipe fitting gets attention much more so than other flammable liquids, for instance things like paint removers, alcohol or acetone which smell very faint by comparison. I expect that the workers had gotten accustomed to a fairly clean air environment without serious toxicity levels, and would estimate that a leak of about 1 drop per minute from a flange would be easily identified and fixed. Not only to keep the neighbors from complaining, but to keep the workers from gagging when they walk closer to that location. If the first sign of trouble was physical tank bulging and/or suddenly stinking up the whole place with lots of MMA vapor (like from an upper tank rupture) when there is no sign of leakage on the ground, that pretty much qualifies as a "gas leak". Once the smell was no longer prominent, I would say that polymerization was well underway and there was not as much free monomer available to build up more pressure or even evaporate very much after that. If there's warm liquid MMA open to the atmosphere, you will smell it downwind. It might be a stretch to say that "nature takes its course" when synthetic monomers spontaneously polymerize like this, but that's what some of them do best that sets them apart. From what I understand, in the uninhibited pure monomer it doesn't take that many PPM of monomer molecules to become "activated" in some way before the chain reaction of them with remaining molecules eventually accelerates to completion. Which may be why such a low concentration of inhibitor works so well, but inhibitor must be well-dispersed within the liquid and there must be enough circulation to avoid local depletion of the inhibitor due to stagnant contact with as yet unidentified unexpected initiators. Not only should it be easy to get a random 1 liter sample from a tank (of such non-viscous material) at any time, the single sample should ideally be highly representative of the entire tank contents. Due to the way the liquid is handled in bulk going in & out of the tank, as well as any additional circulation to insure good mixing of incoming cargo, or after boosting inhibitor amounts when only a few carefully measured pounds or kilos of the concentrated inhibitor is dumped into the bulk monomer to keep it from going below spec. The inhibitors have been selected to be very strong and effective at what they do so it doesn't require a high concentration, and the downstream processors can more easily overcome the inhibitor effect and produce plastics using different and milder polymerization initiator techniques when there is not an excess of inhibitor. Once it gets polymerizing past that minuscule little inhibitor, from that point it's like there is no inhibitor at all. So there is some possibility that this is a fairly worst-case runaway polymerization event where the full amount of caution was rightfully warranted. Even though it would have to be considered fairly benign compared to a whole tank of the liquid monomer dispersing through the neighborhoods, or going up in a fireball, which is always a risk anyway :\ Under storage, it really is tremendous force that the inhibitor is holding back, considering how badly outnumbered it is by the 99.9% of everything else in the tank that wants to spontaneously react with itself otherwise. When the inhibitor is only about 20 PPM, which in percent is 0.0020%, in these cases percent by weight. IOW 20 lbs of MEHQ crystals dissolved in every million lbs of MMA liquid, or in metric 20 kilos of inhibitor for every million kilos of cargo. Now usually the lowest inhibitor concentration will be at the chemical plant that produces the monomers, and it may go into bulk storage the same way when fresh material is moving through the system adequately. From there, vessels, rail cars and trailers often have different amounts of additional inhibitor added in order to boost levels according to purchase agreements of the different industrial consumers. Often by contractors such as companies I have worked for who store the inhibitor concentrate as agents for the client, and can sample industrial tanks & test in the lab to routinely determine inhibitor concentration. Then carefully measure according to requirements and be the third party that certifies the new concentration after our field operator physically adds the additional dose to the tank. For something like vessels and rail cars you just can't expect their cargo samples to accurately reflect a recently boosted inhibitor value, the small amount of inhibitor concentrate won't be adequately mixed with the rest of the bulk monomer before the ship leaves the dock or the train leaves the terminal. So it has to be certified by careful physical addition while being supported by good lab data to begin with. You expect lab readings to match the certificate after the ship gets overseas or the rail car gets across the country. Now measuring low PPM is not always easy but you get better after a while. Much better for me because I got to start doing it my own way as soon as I could, after first establishing as many of the predecessor techniques as possible for reference, but people still wanted more reliable results and so did I since the beginning. Ever since then, doing the continuous improvement thing for more decades than you normally get. Things I will work with, repeatedly ;)

buildbot 5mo ago

Meanwhile in Washington, an unknown number of people where killed today in a paper mill “white liquor” explosion today…: https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/26/longview-chemical-explosion-nippon/ https://www.opb.org/article/2026/05/26/longview-chemical-exp...

deleted 5mo ago
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dakolli 5mo ago
And for what, $25.00 bucks an hour? We need to take back production.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]

photochemsyn 5mo ago

Reminder that the US Chemical Safety Board does great investigations into these kinds of accidents. Here’s a famous one from 2007 involving methylcyclopentadienyl manganese tricarbonyl (a gasoline additive) at T2 Laboratories in Jacksonville Florida. The CSB has a long record of producing great investigative videos without any partisan or legal bias, as the one shown here demonstrates: https://www.csb.gov/t2-laboratories-inc-reactive-chemical-explosion/ https://www.csb.gov/t2-laboratories-inc-reactive-chemical-ex... This agency is the subject of a budget war between the current executive and Congress, with the former trying to cut its budget and the Congress just restoring its budget, so not sure if it will be doing a report on Garden Grove: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/congress-rescues-industry-watchdog-earmarked-for-closure-by-trump-administration/4022869.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/congress-rescues-industr... See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46904017

tardedmeme 5mo ago
I thought Trump defunded them last year? It was big news at the time.
- pfdietz 5mo ago
  I had thought that too, but the funding was kept there by Congress.

bigmattystyles 5mo ago

Tangent but there's a great Sublime song titled `Garden Grove`. Looks like they made a modern video for it that presumably shows a lot of Garden Grove. Or it could be Long Beach, I don't know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpSo_zj0UQw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpSo_zj0UQw

parpfish 5mo ago

i always suspected that chemistry was up to something, but never thought it'd be behind something like this.

GeorgeWoff25 5mo ago

This reminds me of the old adage, every system is secure until someone actually tries to use it.

grunkolsky 5mo ago

[dead]

muyuu 5mo ago

context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Grove_chemical_leak

Schlagbohrer 5mo ago

> "I look forward to the eventual incident report for the root causes of this one - assuming that we do such things any more here in the #$%@! Golden Age in which we find ourselves - because that, too, will make things safer going forwards. One hopes." If there's no after action report, we'll never get a good episode of Well There's Your Problem on this incident, and that would be a loss for both engineering and podcasting ;-(

khuey 5mo ago
Given the disruption this has caused in Orange County I would expect to eventually get a slick US Chemical Safety Board video on it.
- EvanAnderson 5mo ago
  I had to go look-- I thought the CSB got defunded and closed. Luckily it appears it did not (though not for lack of trying). John Childgey's "Causality" podcast[0] covers stuff like this, and I'm sure he'll eventually cover it. [0] https://engineered.network/causality/ https://engineered.network/causality/

trelane 5mo ago

Fascinating! Only tangentially related: I've definitely heard of PMMA, and didn't realize it was plexiglass! It's used regularly in semiconductor fabrication. https://kayakuam.com/product/structsure/pmma-positive-resists https://kayakuam.com/product/structsure/pmma-positive-resist... (also waaaay down on the list of uses at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poly(methyl_methacrylate) but I thought that first link was clearer. Look for "In semiconductor research and industry, PMMA aids as a resist in the electron beam lithography process.")

deleted 5mo ago
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felooboolooomba 5mo ago

Being an armchair expert, I wondered if they couldn't have flown a quadcopter with a small drilling machine and drill a hole on the top to relive pressure?

humanpotato 5mo ago
First, there's probably a pressure relief system already on the tank. The problem is that is analogous to drilling a hole in a pressure cooker, it's either going to rupture the tank entirely, or blast the contents into the air. Also curious where you would get a "quadcopter with a small drilling machine" with a couple hours' notice; even if you had one, it would be hard to maintain a position at one exact spot, and much of the lift energy would be expended in the torque reaction of the drill.
- PaulHoule 5mo ago
  I am seeing papers go by from Chinese researchers who are interested in things like using drones to do maintenance on sea platforms and they'd definitely be interested in attaching drills to drones and the like.
SoftTalker 5mo ago
All process tanks I've seen have various cleanout hatches, drain valves, pressure relief blowoff valves... even your water heater has these. Not sure about this tank in particular and obviously there were no easy answers in this particular event, but hopefully lessons will be learned.
mvkel 5mo ago
It seems like the issue wasn't the pressure so much, but the temperature. The contents were supposed to be stored at 50 degrees. The thermometer for the tank was reading 100 degrees, but nobody knew what the actual temperature was, because the thermometer's maximum reading was 100. So the challenge was to figure out how to cool things down (which would relieve the pressure in turn)
tkel 5mo ago
I don't know about a hole, but the reason why the tank didn't rupture, is because a crack was discovered, which relieved the pressure. They got lucky.

poooka 5mo ago

Whenever I read anything by this guy I just think of George Creel and his Committee on Public Information. He's a throwback.

ck2 5mo ago

Derek Lowe is always such a great read, one of the few good things I discovered during the pandemic

ykl 5mo ago

Ha, from the title alone I was hoping for a Derek Lowe article, and it is!