On the east edge of Mishawaka, Ind., there is a large electrical substation that remains where the Twin Branch coal-fired generating plant once stood. The plant was built in the 1920s next to the St. Joseph River hydroelectric plant. The power from the hydro plant could be used to bring the coal-fired plant online after a cold shutdown. The river also furnished water for the steam condensers. The environmentalists convinced the power company to switch from coal to oil. When the oil embargo hit, they were told to switch back to coal. Lacking a sense of humor, the owners had the plant dismantled in the late 1970s.
A few years ago, there was an explosion and fire in a transformer. It was one of those fires that they just let burn until all the oil used to cool the transformer had been consumed. Not every firefighter wants to rush into an area where 138,000V is the norm and start spraying water from a fire hose. Oil and water are not a good combination, even without the high voltage. I don’t remember if they tried foam. If they did, it didn’t work.
After watching the fire for a while, I wondered if removing the oil from the transformer would help. You need fuel, heat, and air to keep a fire going. I’m wondering if it would be feasible to have an underground tank connected to a drain on the transformer. Something as simple as a ball valve could be connected to a long linkage. This would allow the valve to be opened from a safe distance. It could also be motorized. Gravity would allow the oil to flow into the underground tank. The tank might need to be kept purged with an inert gas just to be safe.
I’ve heard about aircraft in trouble dumping their excess fuel before landing. You have to wonder where that fuel goes after being jettisoned. Jet fuel does not evaporate like gasoline. My hunch is that the fuel is jettisoned to aid firefighters in the event of a fire. If it works for aircraft, it might work for transformers. If the oil could be contained in the underground tank, that might aid in the cleanup. The less oil there is leaking out on to the ground, the better. Murphy says that if you are ready for the fire, it won’t happen.
I don't know if this system has ever been put into service, but it was apparently not at the Twin Branch fire.
This entry was submitted by Pete Ostapchuk and edited by Rob Spiegel.
Pete Ostapchuk was a radar operator on a Nike Hercules site in the Army, where he studied electronics through correspondence courses. He ended up in the electronics engineering department at CTS for eight years, where he worked on industrial automation projects. He also worked at Bayer for eight years in medical diagnostics R&D.
Tell us your experience in solving a knotty engineering problem. Send stories to Rob Spiegel for Sherlock Ohms.
Yes, I'm lucky. Good for your for choosing safe cars. Could be that U.S. cars are getting close to matching the quality and safety of Japan now.
I grew up in the Detroit area, where every job was tied to the auto industry in one way or another. When I was growing up, there was a stigma about owning a non-U.S. car. The attitude was that "When you buy a foreign car, you take away your neighbor's job."
That ebbed a bit beginning in the mid-1970s when consumers even in Detroit started purchasing cars that made sense -- and were not necessarily Detroit cars.
Thanks, Rob. Glad you are still with us and survived your Pinto and your Corvair. Those incidents, among other things, convinced me not to buy American cars, and I don't: I buy Japanese, specifically Nissan.
Well put, Ann. Myself, I lucked out with my famously unsafe cars. My first car was a Corvair --the car Ralph Nader made his reputation on with the book, "Unsafe at Any Speed." Later on I owned a Pinto and I suffered a rear-end collision. No flames, though.
Disasters such as BP in the Gulf and and the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, and even more so the mess at Fukushima, show up how inadequate our regulations are, as well as, often more so, how inadequate enforcement procedures are. I find it hard to take seriously the complaints of businesses about regulations stifling innovation and all that. Protecting people, animals and "the environment" should be a normal cost of doing business. If it weren't for pioneers like Ralph Nader, we'd still be putting up with Pinto car fires and worse. Instead, we let Chinese citizens put up with Foxconn and with their own government that allows Foxconn, since businesses that offshored US jobs over there were too "stifled" to treat American workers like human beings and follow reasonable procedures for protecting us and our resources.
What I was referring to on "overley strict" is the continual complaint from business that government regulations are arbitrary and don't address real needs, real dangers. Then, as with the BP setup prior to the Gulf accident, the regulations were not enforced. So, I was being very general. A good example became visible during the recent discussion of the oil pipeline from Canada. Some years ago, the government had strict regulations regarding 127,000 miles of gas and oil pipelines. While the regulations were strict, the government had one inspector. I'm not sure what the situlation is now.
Rob, perhaps this seems to belabor the obvious, but it's not obvious to me. What regulations would be "overly strict"? With systems this potentially dangerous, I would want regulations that take in more cases and produce fewer errors, and therefore accidents and disasters, not ones that take in fewer cases and produce more problems.
I think you're right, Ann. The insurance companies would probably do a straightforward calculation regarding the cost of an accident with and without the damper, versus the cost of the damper and the likelihood of an accident. I'm not confident the government would do the same analysis if they got involved. The government might come up with overly strict regulations that wouldn't ultimately get enforced.
I think those are good points, Rob, about the mechanics involved. But I'm still curious about the insurance aspects. Surely these plants need insurance, and either insurance or government regulations will dictate what disaster mitigation strategies are used, right?
Without the availability of the fire-dampering set-up that is discussed in this blog, it wouldn't be factored in. But if this set-up were available, I would imagine the decision as to whether to deploy it would be assessed based on cost versus the potential exposure due to a fire that can't be put out.
Interesting that you mention risk management, Rob. Risk assessment analysis is used by insurance companies to determine exactly those different kinds of risks. So I wonder why such risks--and the needed coverage for same--haven't already been factored in via the plant's insurance policy?
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