The Screen Room, by JF

I was sitting in the extra board waiting room while a tune ran through my head … “The Tennessee Waltz”.  It was New Years Eve 1953.  The last several years  I had always attended a dance at the Legion hut on this night, but not  tonight.  Now I was sitting here, meeting the 4-12 shift at the “pulp mill”, trying to get work.  A friend of my father’s, Mr Crawford, walked in and told me to “come on.”  Years later, my father married Mr. Crawford’s widow after my mother died.  Well, it is a small town and getting smaller.

We walked to the back side of the mill and I followed him into “the screen room”.  He showed me what I was to do and took off.  I don’t think I ever saw him again, certainly not that night.

The screen room was located in a two-floor building near the woodyard.  The building smelled of pine, a very pleasant odor, and was warm with high humidity. The purpose was to separate good usable chips for the process although I had no idea that night what was going on.  There were conveyer belts going every which way and in the process there were pine chips and sawdust flying off the belts and landing on the floor, usually in piles.  My job was to shovel up the chips and sawdust and put them back on the belts.  It was an easy job and only lasted about a half an hour every hour.  The rest of the time was mine so to speak.  The noise was not too bad and best of all, I earned another $9.50 per shift (8 hours).

I figured out about the screens; there were several of them, each about as big as a small car.  The chips from somewhere were fed at the top of a vibrating screen that was on an angle of about 30 degrees.  The chips that fell through the top screen went onto another screen that had small openings where the good chips went on a different belt than did the too small chips.   Years later I found out that the too large chips were chipped again and sent back to the screens; the good chips were sent to the digesters and the too small chips and sawdust were burned to make steam…try writing that.  One thing I would say now is don’t get caught in a moving belt…it would be sundown!

Since I never saw another person in the screen room all night, I spent about half a shift looking out of a small window on the side of the building which overlooked a wet road and the side of a building housing a paper machine.  I thought of the song again: “I was waltzing with my darlin’ to the Tennessee Waltz, when an old friend I happened to see. I introduced him to my loved one and while they were waltzing, my friend stole my sweetheart from me.”  In those days, you could understand the words in a song and many sweethearts were lost.  Patty Page sang the song, published in 1950, and many others by her were enjoyed in the 50’s. “I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz.  Now I know just how much I have lost.”

I wouldn’t be waltzing that night, I thought.

JF

A Story About Two Managers

The paper industry has always had a "spotty" record when it comes to safety. I don't really know why, but I suspect it is probably no different than most. You'll be going along with good safety performance and then hit a period of time with a lot of injuries. This is how two different managers handled it.

Manager One. After a rash of injuries, this manager called in an consultant and all the department heads for a long day meeting. They went through the causes of injuries and ways management could change to improve workforce performance.

Manager Two. Again after a rash of injuries, this manager called in all the department heads and announced that every mill supervisor would work 12 hour days, and give round the clock coverage for the next ten days. He reported that he would be checking on their progress from his vacation and if there were any injuries during that time, the long hours would continue until their was improvement (The Ole Sea Gull Management Style).

So, which one was better? Well, if you practice MBO (management by objectives), they both saw a reduction in injuries reported and got the results desired by the manager. Which brings to mind whether they were using the correct measurement to gage success?

Old School - Chlorine Gas

The Chemical Facility Security News Blog has an interesting post of the Homeland security issues with chlorine gas rail cars. An interesting read for those familiar with Chlorine.

Reader Comment 06-19-10 Chlorine Gas

Fred Millar replied to my complaints about his use of the term ‘midnight rules’ in a comment to that blog post. Just one of the typical problems with the use of political terms, they have meanings and they have connotations. In the current environment of political discourse we all have a tendency to hear the connotations that fit out pre-conceived picture of the political scene. I withdraw my complaint.
Catastrophic Leaks
Fred does close his comment with something certainly worth discussing. He wrote:

“Some homeland security experts talk about "The next BOOM?" that will compell attention to lack of effective regulation, whereas I tend to focus on the the next screaming "WHOOSH!" of toxic gas, which the best US gas modelers assume will mostly all blast out of a 90-ton chlorine railcar , e.g., within 2 minutes. Leaving local emergency responders no effective response except to run with everybody else.”

Fred is absolutely correct, the catastrophic failure of a chlorine (or anhydrous ammonia, or hydrogen fluoride, or whatever TIH of your particular fear) railcar is just about the most horrible consequence that can be reasonably imagined as a consequence of a terrorist attack or even just a plain old accident. Forget the overblown fears of a rogue nuke or a jihadist bio-attack; those are just Hollywood scenarios.

Having said that, I don’t spend much time worrying about a catastrophic failure of a railcar. That takes too much skill, practice and patience to execute. You can’t just slap an explosive charge on one of the essentially armored tanks and get a catastrophic failure (and I have been assured by some people that would know that such testing has been done). I know the techniques that would have to be used, on a theoretical basis, and they are painstaking and require extensive practice and precise execution. In my opinion this puts them beyond the skill set of our recent attackers. So, I am concerned, but not worried.
Less than Catastrophic Leaks
No, what I am more afraid of happening is that an adequately trained and experienced attacker manages to put a relatively small hole in the side of one of these tankers. The huge toxic cloud that Fred fears from a catastrophic failure would not result and quite frankly no one would know to run from the much smaller toxic cloud that would form along the right-of-way of the train.

The deaths would be relatively few, probably measured in the low hundreds (I know hundreds of dead civilians is unthinkable, but much less terrible than the tens of thousands that Fred is concerned with). The concentration would be low enough and the gas irritating enough to cause most people to get out of the cloud before they were exposed to a fatal dose.

As the train continued to motor unaware through a large urban area at 10 to 15 miles per hour it would spread a cloud of chlorine gas that would permeate the areas on either side of the tracks, as the urban wind currents spread the cloud in unpredictable local eddies. Determining what areas to evacuate, and in which to order residents to shelter-in-place would take so much time as to be totally ineffective.

Large numbers (thousands?) of people would be seriously injured before anyone realized the source of the release and could do something to stop the train and mitigate the release.

For most of those injured people, if they were treated properly and promptly, the effects would be unpleasant, but certainly survivable. Unfortunately, our medical services are not set up to handle truly mass casualty type events over a large area of an urban center. The lung damage alone will require large numbers of ventilators and specialized therapies that are just not available on that scale.

This would lead to subsequent deaths that would not be laid at the feet of the attackers, but would be blamed, with more than some justification, on the government for not adequately addressing the emergency needs of the populous.
Prevention

Which ever of us is more probably correct in predicting the more likely attack, I don’t think either of us really expects such an attack to happen (I know I don’t; I fear it, but don’t expect it). If that’s the case why worry? If I’m wrong about the attack not happening, the results just don’t bear considering. We call this low probability, high consequence event; you know like a well blow-out a mile down in the Gulf.

With events like this you know that you have to take some action to prevent the unlikely. The question is how many resources can you afford to expend to prevent an unlikely event like this? This is what we need to decide.

Both Fred and I would like to see all through-shipments of TIH chemicals moved outside of major urban areas. This would effectively eliminate the risk of these cars being targeted by terrorist, reducing the risk to ‘just’ the normal (very low) accident rate associated with the shipment of these chemicals. Fred believes that re-routing can accomplish this in most instances, I think that it is going to require some significant infrastructure changes (I know Fred, I oversimplified both of our positions, completely overlooking the elimination of some number of shipments).

But, in any case, no matter how much Fred and I argue this between ourselves, it is readily apparent that no one is really willing to address this issue in a meaningful way. The costs are just too high it seems. Hopefully we will have time to change that calculation before such an attack actually occurs.

A First Job Story, by JF

Recovery Boiler…Part 1… My first Pulp & Paper  job (1953-1954).

The Extra Board was a group of unemployed men meeting shifts to hopefully obtain work .It was formed as a way of filling vacancies in paper and pulp mills many years ago. If a person was out for a shift at any level in the line of progression, the vacancy would be filled by “setting up” to the vacancy; the extra board guy would fill the job at the bottom, usually the labor job.  This job could and did occur in any department in the plant.  It saved a lot of overtime and other monies because the extra board guys only got paid for the night or two they worked and with no benefits.  The jobs were not permanent.  Usually some person would say “we need a body” and we’d flip for it or the department would request a particular person.

My first job as a member of the extra board was “punching spouts” in the recovery area; I won the flip.  There were four small boilers (built in 1939) with many spouts to punch (clean off).  Each one inadvertently collected green liquor crystals and/or “slag” from the molten chemicals on the tubes or spouts and the build-up had to be periodically knocked off through small holes that ringed each boiler.  In addition, all of the molten chemicals poured out of the boiler through a spout which dumped into the green liquor tank.  The spout was enclosed in  a “doghouse”, not that any of the information was conveyed to me.  I punched away not knowing what I was doing. 

I was given a short metal rod (five feet) and told to have at it.  Each punch, made by moving aside a small round window, brought a spatter of molten slag.  At 2,000+ degrees, it will burn nearly anything, not to mention it is highly caustic and will chemically burn your skin.  They did give me a pair of safety glasses.  In addition, the noise made from the molten chemicals hitting the water in the green liquor tank was horrendous and continuous.  It was like thousands of stones,and maybe a car or two, being thrown from a great height and landing just above your head on a tin roof.  That’s right, no hearing protection.  Maybe that’s why I can’t hear now 50 plus years later.

A guy came around (he had to shout in my ear) and said I didn’t need to punch the doghouse spouts.  This was fine with me as it looked awfully dangerous.  About an hour later, the foreman (or said he was) came and asked why I hadn’t punched the doghouse spouts.  I positioned myself beside a doghouse and punched with my 5-foot metal rod and jumped aside.  Fire shot out and hit the wall on the other side of the room…no kidding!  This was repeated on each side of all the doghouse spouts.  Several days later, I found out from a friend that there was a 15-foot rod that was used for the doghouses.

When the evening was over my face had many small burns as did my shirt which was too burned to ever use again.  I couldn’t hear for a couple of days but my take home pay was $9.50 which got me through the next week at college.  That money was a huge amount for 8-hours pay in 1953.  Funny, I never won the coin toss again to work on the recovery boilers.

JF

Wood - The Final Frontier (part two)

Everyone knows someone with a cool job. Well, we used to kid one of those folks that they had the "second" best job there was (more on the best job in a later post)....and that job was to help develop superior Loblolly Pine trees. They would take tips off of big trees found in the woods (often by shooting them off), graft them onto a base tree stock, then cross pollinate that type with other "super" trees found in the wild. They would keep doing this until they had a few "superior" trees which could be used in replanting trees that had been harvested for the timber industry.

We used to say, in addition to working outside most of the time, that everyone would always get two chances. If the first cross didn't work out well, you wouldn't know it until about 15 years - then the second chance would take 15 years - and then it would be time to retire.

This argument held up until they developed a way to speed the process up with green houses. They could grow the second, third, and so forth generation trees in green house conditions which reduced the time to 7 years. I guess this is now a job just like all the others.

The Fun Of Having Mill Duty - Part One

This  Saturday morning meeting in January, was running long.  State was playing Duke on TV at noon in Raleigh .  This was in the 60’s when there were eight teams and there were real rivalries (and not many games on TV).  One of the long talkers was giving his "not wanted opinion on papermaking".  The manager this morning, was practicing his most unusual habit … maybe the rarest habit on earth.  He was occasionally exchanging his saliva from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue, and with his mouth slightly open.  I was watching him intently when a power house foreman came in the room and announced that there had been a spill and it was bad.  The Manager wanted me and a couple of others to accompany him to investigate. It turned out that a whole railcar of material had been lost to the sewer.  There goes my basketball game.

The folks, that unloaded railcars, in those days, were usually relatively new hires since it was a very dirty job.  In this case, there was a faulty connection between the car and the unloading line and the whole car’s contents had spilled.  The material was # 6 fuel oil, which, when heated, is very much like what is spilling in the gulf now. 

The oil was flowing into a storm sewer which eventually went into our 1.2 billion gallon holding basin  which in turn dumped to the river.  The oil was moving pretty fast down a ditch  and the basin already had a big area of oil floating on the top.   Since we couldn’t stop it, someone suggested burning it.  I wasn’t so sure since I could image a huge plume of black smoke that would bring every little fire department in the state - but I couldn’t think of any thing better to do.  We began throwing matches (most everyone smoked in those days) in the ditch with no effect.  We balled up lighted paper with the same result. Then we built a fire and threw burning wood…no better.  Someone suggested pouring gasoline in it and that became the plan.  An employee returned with a 5-gallon can and poured the contents in the basin.  We were all well aware of the dangers of gasoline so we stood well back.  A volunteer threw a lighted stick in and there was immediately a loud explosion that sounded like VROOOM.  We all ducked- too late of course- and then heat hit us in the face. No one was hurt.  The fire burned brightly and furiously without too much smoke.  We were elated; our problem was solved.  In about 60 seconds, the fire burned out, never to be started again.  We looked at each other blankly; the Manager said we should all go home, so we did.  There was no one to notify in those days.  I saw 3/4ths of the State game, which they won.

In 3 or 4 days, there was no evidence of an oil spill except a little oil on the sides of the ditch.  There was none to be seen in the basin.  We looked for it in the continuous sample of the outlet for years but none ever showed up.  Procedures were changed and as far as I know, there were never any more spills of # 6 fuel oil.

I wonder if we'd make the Homeland Security list today?

JMF

Wood - The Final Frontier (part one)

Issues with wood (chips, logs) have been an on-going battle between mill folks (the people who use the wood) and woodlands folks (the people who bring the wood in)....and with wood being the biggest raw material cost (with fiber being the finished product) you'd think that the paper industry would have a pretty good handle on this.  If you did think it - you'd be wrong.

It was almost as if the two groups (mill and woodlands) worked for different companies. Early in my career, the mill started taking whole tree chips. Mill operations became erratic - and the mill suspected the chip supply. I was given the task of setting up a chip testing program - to test every chip truck that came in (about 150). We purchased a trailer, chip classifier, and an oven.

The first week of testing, we had the results we suspected - there was a problem with chips. The next week was spent with the woodland folks looking over our procedures and testing - to say we were not getting a representative sample. So the third week was spent perfecting our procedures.....and the 4th week produced the same results.......but nothing changed. The 5th week, nothing changed....the offending companies were still bringing in the same quality of wood and the same amount of wood.

We continued the testing program for 9 weeks and shut it down when nothing changed.....well....almost nothing.  During this intense scrutiny, the scale house operator noticed water leaking from one of the chip trucks. Further investigation showed that the truck had been modified so that one of the fuel tanks was actually a water tank with a plug in the bottom. The truck driver had a string which pulled the plug out right after weighing in....by the time he had unloaded, the water tank would be empty - thus the mill was buying water being drained to the ground.

When the rest of the trucks from this company were checked - they all had been modified.... some estimates were that over $1 million dollars had been scammed from the company.

The Chip Test and Other Adventures

In the 60's and 70's when paper mills were improving operations for environmental compliance, many waste flows were not measured. A quick way to get a "ball park" flow was to measure a drain area under liquid and then toss a wood chip (or stick, or paper - anything that would float) and measure the time it took the chip to go a measured distance. From this a phrase was often made, "accurate enough for paper mill work".

Early in my career, I (along with another process engineer) was given the task to measure the air flow leaving a turpentine condenser. There were no sampling ports and no shutdowns planned to add them (plus, no one wanted to work on them anyway). One of the Technical Managers found a trade journal report which said you could take a plastic trash bag, cut a hole in the side, tape it to the discharge, and get a "paper mill" quality measurement of the flow.

With this knowledge, we surveyed the job site, which was covered in emulsified sulfate turpentine, and realized there were times when the stack would blow emulsified turpentine on whatever (or whomever) was in the area. With this knowledge, we decided to proceed with all disposable clothing.

After carefully cutting the whole in the garbage bag, we taped it to the pipe and began taking measurements. All was going great until several digesters started venting non-condensible gases at the same time. The garbage bag started blowing up like a balloon - which caused the hole we had carefully cut to increase in size (making the paper mill quality measurement much less so).

Regardless, we continued to collect measurements. Suddenly, the stack went from pressure to a vacuum (apparently several digester vents stopped and the cooling water flow control was very slow) and sucked our bag right off the pipe and into the condenser.

We looked at each other, wondering what to do? Do we tell anyone? Would it make any difference if we did?

Since we were hot, and smelling like sulfate turpentine (which is not good) - we quickly decided we had enough information and completed our task - without a mention of the missing garbage bag.  And you know - that garbage bag never did show  up -  in the future - I was never surprised at what was found in the process.

First Paper Industry Job

A lot has changed in the paper industry - and for the better. My first job was for the summer as a paper tester. At the time, it was one of the very few jobs which had air conditioning - not to mention you could stay relatively clean - also unusual for the industry.

With 3 days training, I was ready to go. No orientation about safety programs, about where the cafeteria was, or that there was a nurse 24/7 (common then, but not today). I quickly found out the "training way" was not the operating way. Machine foremen had a lot of power with their own way of doing paper testing. You learned pretty quick not to rock the boat - at least on nights and weekends. A good number of the machine foremen were missing arms (or parts there of) because of incidents on the machine (threading the machine was very dangerous in those days - still is today - but with a lot of safety improvements). As a consequence, they took a very personal approach to my safety - even if the formal approach was some what lacking.

There were a lot of great people working on the shift and we had some pretty good times. My lessons  forward were don't jump to conclusions based on shift tests and never assume an employee knows the organization or the safe way to do the job.