re: Explosion Reported at Valero Refinery in Texas

If you're waiting for Grok to tell you it was a terrorist attack Grok will not do that until some official source says it was. Grok thinks it was a coincidence and says it was the heater.

However, Grok verifies the specifics. That the guy made the tweet one hour before and deleted along with 4,700 other tweets.

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How is this political?

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How do you function?

With that large fired heater nearby this looks like a naphtha reformer which produces hydrogen.

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I read somewhere from a guy working out there, that a hydrogen compressor blew up and maybe that caused the Reformer Heater to catch fire.

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That makes sense. You cannot see the instantaneous flame from a hydrogen leak in daylight. then KABOOM.

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Take a Sabbatical or lobotomy

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Appears he’s already had the latter

Looks like the Valero Open ceremonies got started a week early.

Need to be cautious jumping to rarly conclusions. Here’s the latest



David Blackmon
@EnergyAbsurdity

Port Arthur Refinery explodes into flames

An explosion rocked America's 9th largest refinery (cap.: 369k bbls/day) operated by @Valero late Monday afternoon, forcing employee evacuations and shelter-in-place orders for nearby neighborhoods.

Here's what we know:

The explosion occurred in a 243-Diesel hydrotreater unit capable of producing about 47,000 bpd of the universal commercial transport fuel.

The refinery remains shut down Tuesday morning pending investigation and inspections.

Luckily, no major injuries were reported and all personnel are safe, though some of the plant's 770 employees suffered minor injuries.

The Valero plant specializes in the processing of heavy sour oil into gasoline, Diesel and jet fuel.

Key to note: The plant has served as the main destination point of Venezuelan crude coming into the U.S. since the deposition of former dictator Nicolas Maduro.

Until Port Arthur can be reopened, those cargoes will need to be re-routed to other, similarly tooled refineries in Lake Charles, Houston, and Corpus Christi.

Yet to be determined: This *could* cause further tightening in the Diesel market along with some minor price increases.

Bottom Line: Refinery fires always create catastrophic-looking videos like this one, but few really evolve into catastrophic events.

That's the case here: The Port Arthur Refinery fire will cause some minor displacements as repairs are made, but the market impacts will be small. Give a word of thanks that everyone is safe.

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also called a decomp. decomposition right?

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A decomp is when the ploymerization reaction is uncontrolled. Temperature goes up over 1000 degC and pressure spikes in the autoclave and safety disc bursts and you let down to atnospheric pressure. Anytime you let the pressure down from reactor pressure to recycle pressure or atmospheric you get a reverse joule Thompson.

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This is actually the second refinery explosion in less than 20 days. And that in and of itself is strange. Fires aren't that uncommon in refineries, but fires that escalate to explosions are. Less than 10% of oil refinery fires escalate to an explosion.

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Its a reformer Hydrogen ignites as pressure is relieved into the atmosphere.
A shite ton of cubicle jockeys will claim bad actors.

When installing a hydrogen compressor, after all of the flanges are bolted up, straw broom is passed around all joints to see if it leaks You cannot see the flame. Straw will catch fire. This can easily escalate into a giant Kaboom, think the Hindenburg disaster.