Blast hits Dow’s largest Argentina cracker

HOUSTON (ICIS)–An explosion took place Friday morning at Dow’s No 2 cracker in the Bahia Blanca petrochemical complex in Argentina, the company said.

The plant has a capacity of 455,000 tonnes/year.

Depending on the nature of the damages to the unit, production of polyethylene (PE) in Argentina could be seriously affected by the outage, unless the company can secure ethylene from an alternative source.

Through its Twitter account, the municipality of Bahia Blanca reported that no injuries were reported. In addition, firefighters assured that the situation is under control. There were no leaks of dangerous gases.

The blast took place at 0:20 hours local time (3:20 hours GMT), Dow said on Twitter.

Pressure had built up, resulting in a rupture of a vessel in the furnace condensate system, Dow said. There was no fire because there were no hydrocarbons present.

There were no injuries to personnel, and the plant was brought down to a safe stop, Dow said.

The company added that an investigation of the incident is already underway.

The image above shows polyethylene, which is made from ethylene. Photo by Al Greenwood