Flamers

Fake out! Believe it or not, I can get away with a title like that for yet another unwanted, work-related blog post!

First, we’ll start with a quick geography lesson on the four production facilities of my site. These are the buildings where chemicals are actually reacted and made. This list does not include the support buildings, QC buildings, labs, main offices, etc. Lined up like ducks in a row we have:
Production I: This building specializes in air sensitive reactions. By “air sensitive” I mean that if you take a jar of their products and open it up, it will likely spontaneously burst into flames.
Production II: This is my building. We have hardware designed to stand up to the nastiest, most corrosive, most lethal substances made. (Really.) We make many products that are less intense, but let’s not focus on that in this post. Some of our less friendly products include the active ingredient in a pepper spray (like “Mace”), phosgeneation chemistry, chlorinations, brominations, use of solvents like chloroform, etc. For fun, think back to the last time you saw a video where some guy gets maced. That’s a spray of extremely dilute material in some other solvent. To understand what we (sometimes) make, you have to imagine the stuff pure, in a 2000 gallon reactor. It’s party time! In contrast to Pro I, our products are rarely prone to starting themselves on fire without help.
Production III: This building is more general, and works on a variety of products without special conditions.
Production IV: This building focuses mainly on purifications, separations, and other generic reaction-unintense tasks.

In summary: Pro I makes things that flash fires. Pro II doesn’t.

Moving on, we had a new engineer hired for one of the other buildings. At one of the recent engineering meetings, he had a question that reminded me of when I started work as an engineer here. I’ll tell my story first.

About two years ago, I was walking out behind my building when I noticed a roaring fire blazing behind Pro I. Basically, about ten drums (550 gallons) of some unknown chemical were blazing up under a metal awning. No one but me was around. I went back inside and asked my manager, “Is Pro I doing anything special at the moment? They seem to have a bunch of product on fire.” A quick call next door revealed that they were aware of the fire. In fact, they had intentionally taken the drums of impure material out back, opened them, and left. The (correct) theory is that the problem of having to dispose of impure chemicals will go away on its own for the people in Pro I. (Flamers.) This happens all the time, and you get used to it.

Now for the new engineer’s story. At the group meeting for engineering staff, he asked, “Those huge fires that Pro I starts in that metal awning… We have a lot of electrical wiring up there. Is it rated for that?”
“You mean, is the electrical grid rated to be run inside of a bonfire?”
“Yeah.”
“Probably not.”
“Maybe someone should look into that.”
“Yeah.”

I just sat there, staring around the table, laughing quietly to myself.