A smelt water explosion in a chemical recovery boiler at Lincoln Paper and Tissue, Lincoln, Maine, USA, this past Saturday morning temporarily shut down the mill, but no injuries were reported, according to an article in the Bangor Daily News. The explosion reportedly left various kinds of debris (sheet metal panels) missing from the building (see photo).
"We don’t know why it happened," Bill Peterson, the mill’s personnel director sated in the newspaper article, "and we won’t know how much damage was done until we get a chance to get in there and look at it." Boiler water temperatures, he noted, typically rise to several hundred degrees Fahrenheit. The system’s alarm controls were damaged in the explosion.
It was unclear how many workers were near the boiler when the explosion occurred. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration and other agencies were immediately notified of the incident, Keith Van Scotter, Lincoln Paper and Tissue’s president and CEO, said in the article.
When the explosion occurred, company officials immediately instituted their incident command procedures, which include counts of workers, and found no one missing, said Van Scotter, who was out-of-state at an industry conference.
Peterson was glad that the mill was on its typical near-skeleton weekend staffing. He praised millworkers for following their emergency-response and incident command plans flawlessly. "Everything worked the way it was supposed to," he said. "The Lincoln Paper and Tissue family of workers is still intact. That’s No. One."
The mill’s three tissue machines were back online by Monday morning, but its two paper machines remained idle. Van Scotter said company officials hope to restart one of the two paper machines by week’s end, but paper production likely will be at least partly curtailed by the damaged boiler. Temporary layoffs are possible.
"The boiler damage is extensive. This is a big project to handle. The impact on the business is that we are not able to run the pulp mill until we get it (the recovery boiler) repaired," Van Scotter said in a follow up newspaper article on Monday.
The mill employs about 385 people. It makes tissue for party goods and medical uses, plus paper for file folders, envelopes, and reply cards.
The recovery boiler is about 40 years old. It had been significantly refitted about eight years ago, and underwent its annual maintenance within the past few weeks, Van Scotter said.
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