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Follow-up on the chemical bottle explosion at the University of Rochester on 10/18/2014:
This occurred in the Chemistry Department. It involved a 4 liter amber colored glass bottle which was rinsed with a mixture of acetone and ethanol. The bottle was then used to collect 50% nitric acid waste. There seems to be conflicting accounts regarding how much residual solvent was left in the bottle. Apparently the procedure was to collect the rinsate in an organic waste container, then allow the contents to fully evaporate to remove any residue. It sounds like that procedure was not followed, and 100 ml of 50% nitric acid was added to the bottle which was still contaminated with acetone/ethanol rinsate. The cap was then put in place and tightened. After a few minutes, one of the students heard the bottle hissing and he approached the bottle to adjust the cap, at which point it exploded injuring him and two other students in the lab. Thankfully, none of the injuries were serious. Needless to say, the Department is rewriting their procedure to ensure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again. The use of plastic waste collection bottles for nitric acid (which has a tendency to react with just about everything) has been recommended, as well.
Brad Miller, CHMM
Manager, Environmental Compliance
Environmental Health and Safety
University of Rochester
The BION will be closed tomorrow morning until approximately 8:30 am to allow Facilities to work on the exhaust system.
Rooms 1402, 1411, 1412 & 1421 are now open.
We are going to keep these rooms closed until we get the all clear from facilities. Sorry about that
Rooms 1402, 1411, 1412 & 1421 are now open.
The HF bench repair is scheduled for Saturday the 21st. That room will remain closed until then.
The card readers on the wet process doors should be fully operational by Friday afternoon. In order to have access we should have your signed Chemical Usage form and your signed Equipment Training Log. Only qualified users will be allowed entry in those areas (including buddies). All users must scan their card for entry. Please do not let users in the room if they do not have their access card. Failure to comply with the rules may result in possible loss of room or lab privileges.
This week Lifeng will be hosting two demo sessions on chemical wet process.
He will cover:
- Proper operation of the laminar flow hood
- Wast management of reactive chemicals
- Labeling
The Demo’s are scheduled this Wednesday and Thursday from 1:00 – 2:30pm. Each Demo will allow for 6 users. If interested please RSVP to Ryan Smith at sryan@uci.edu.
This week we have two sessions scheduled for wet bench qualification:
Wednesday 11:30 – 1:00PM
Thursday 3:00PM – 4:30PM
If interested, please e-mail Alana Valencia at anvalenc@uci.edu to schedule. We will have a total of 12 time slots available and will be scheduling on a first come first serve basis.
Today proxy readers will be installed in the following BiON wet etch rooms:
1432 HF/BOE etch area
1422 metal etch & solvent clean area
1421 Inorganic cleaning area for RCA1 & RCA2 & Piranha & KOH
There will be no access to the wet process rooms while they are working. Once installed, only those users that have been qualified (training log must be signed) and that have completed the chemical usage form will be authorized to access. Let us know if you have any questions.
The chemical usage form can be downloaded from:
https://www.inrf.uci.edu/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/chemical-usage-form.pdf
