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Started By
Message
re: Koura Plant St. Gabriel - 1 dead, 1 injured - Hydroflouric Acid Exposure
Posted on 11/19/25 at 9:49 pm to deltadummy
Posted on 11/19/25 at 9:49 pm to deltadummy
That is hard.
0
Posted on 11/19/25 at 10:08 pm to michael corleone
quote:
Is this the old Honeywell Plant ?
No, old ICI plant
Posted on 11/19/25 at 10:15 pm to Trout Bandit
I worked heavily around HF, every hour of every work day for 35 years, and yes it is some bad stuff....as bad as it gets.
The company I worked for actually provided the cylinder of HF and helped sponsor this experiment.
HF release in Nevada desert
The company I worked for actually provided the cylinder of HF and helped sponsor this experiment.
HF release in Nevada desert
Posted on 11/19/25 at 11:28 pm to duckblind56
Honeywell had a release a few years back and I caught a pretty good whiff of it. . Within 2 days I couldn't talk and I was coughing up some nasty stuff for a while.
That video reminds me of one of the ones I had to watch when planning the demo of a chlorosulfonic unit. That stuff is pretty bad, but HF has always scared me more.
That video reminds me of one of the ones I had to watch when planning the demo of a chlorosulfonic unit. That stuff is pretty bad, but HF has always scared me more.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 6:05 am to wal marks
Lol Mexichem
Posted on 11/20/25 at 6:27 am to MSCGA
Poor guys. That's nasty stuff and I remember a company using it to dissolve minerals in laboratory sieves.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 6:59 am to Macfly
I worked as a summer engineer at Allied Chemical (now Honeywell) running a pilot plant for the onsite R&D team. Got some HF liquid under my fingernail due to a pinhole leak in my acid gloves, and got the pleasure of having the Baton Rouge Clinic doctor pry my fingernail off so they could inject my fingertip with calcium glutinate.
Let’s just say the Japanese knew what they were doing with the bamboo splints under the nails. My finger was shot so full of Lidocaine it looked like a link of boudin, and when he pulled that nail off, I could see Jesus briefly.
There had been one fatality in the actual HF plant a few years before when a leak in a pipe sprayed a guy. They said he was three feet from a safety shower, and immediately started flooding himself, but it wasn’t enough. 40 years being in and out of plants, this is the only chemical that ever legit scared me.
Let’s just say the Japanese knew what they were doing with the bamboo splints under the nails. My finger was shot so full of Lidocaine it looked like a link of boudin, and when he pulled that nail off, I could see Jesus briefly.
There had been one fatality in the actual HF plant a few years before when a leak in a pipe sprayed a guy. They said he was three feet from a safety shower, and immediately started flooding himself, but it wasn’t enough. 40 years being in and out of plants, this is the only chemical that ever legit scared me.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 7:17 am to MSCGA
That plant is GARBAGE. Out of date tech…. Horribly cheap management.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 7:36 am to Icansee4miles
I worked at Daikin in Decatur, AL in the mid 90’s. Shortly after I left, they had an explosion where operators open a valve of fully pressurized tetrafluoroethylene ( monomer used to make Teflon) into a tank that had residual air, causing a chain reaction and explosion.The lead operator was killed instantly by a flange hitting him, but two other operators were burned severely and inhaled HF and died excruciating deaths about 24 hours later. I knew the two operators well and one of them hired in the same day I did. I heard several stories about shortcuts taken that resulted in the incident, but won’t repeat them since they can’t be verified. They have had other issues there as well. Glad I left when I did.
I also worked at the Mitsubishi plant in Mobile that used 49% Hydrofluoric acid (if it’s 50% or greater, it can’t be shipped by truck) used to etch polysilicon used in the semiconductor industry.
I was very fortunate not to have any exposure myself or my employees at the time I was there. We did have calcium glucinate gel at home to rub on our skin if we felt we had been exposed.
One important thing we were told if we ever went to the hospital with a potential exposure was to tell the staff we were exposed to “HF” and not “Hydrofluoric acid.” Apparently someone had said “Hydrofluoric acid” and the staff heard “Hydrochloric acid” and the treatments are totally different. They never said what the final outcome was for that person.
I also worked at the Mitsubishi plant in Mobile that used 49% Hydrofluoric acid (if it’s 50% or greater, it can’t be shipped by truck) used to etch polysilicon used in the semiconductor industry.
I was very fortunate not to have any exposure myself or my employees at the time I was there. We did have calcium glucinate gel at home to rub on our skin if we felt we had been exposed.
One important thing we were told if we ever went to the hospital with a potential exposure was to tell the staff we were exposed to “HF” and not “Hydrofluoric acid.” Apparently someone had said “Hydrofluoric acid” and the staff heard “Hydrochloric acid” and the treatments are totally different. They never said what the final outcome was for that person.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 7:52 am to MSCGA
A friend who managed the demolition of a couple of HF alkylation units for Chevron in CA told me that he had to basically boil the steel before it could be sold as scrap.
This post was edited on 11/20/25 at 7:53 am
Posted on 11/20/25 at 7:58 am to MSCGA
A friend who managed a Baker Hughes rental tools outlet in Siberia for two years told me that inconel downhole tools came back eaten up. They were reworking old Soviet wells to get them flowing again. Soviets used HF to acidize wells.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 8:02 am to CitizenK
quote:
Soviets used HF to acidize wells.
Posted on 11/20/25 at 8:02 am to Strannix
quote:
Lol Mexichem
Not sure “lol” is appropriate here. A man didn’t go home to his kids.
Posted on 11/22/25 at 10:21 am to Crusty
told my wife about this thread and she starts shaking her head.
she used to use it to etch porcelain dental work. was told in school that if it got on your skin it would eat all the way through.
will also destroy the pipes if you put it down the drain. she'll stick with phosphoric acid, thank you very much.
she used to use it to etch porcelain dental work. was told in school that if it got on your skin it would eat all the way through.
will also destroy the pipes if you put it down the drain. she'll stick with phosphoric acid, thank you very much.
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