Steam Explosion

Perhaps I should first explain what a steam explosion is.  Then, the near destruction of my anticipated career might make some sense.

When liquid water boils, it turns into steam and immediately occupies a thousand times the volume it occupied as a liquid.  That’s not a problem when you’re boiling water on a stove.  But when you put a lot of heat into a lot of water, the results can be startling.

My first job out of academia was in R&D as a chemist.  I told my bosses about my ambition to transfer into production management.  They accommodated me, but said that I should take an on-the-job training assignment at a small plant in New Jersey. 

The plant was in the middle of a capital expansion and they needed all the help they could get.  I was designated to help fill the breach.

As I started my term at the New Jersey plant I discovered that I had really found my calling in life.  The immediacy of production was more to my liking than the delayed gratification of research.  The pressure of getting the new equipment running on time was an adrenaline rush.

However, two questions remained:

• I knew that in production management I would be dealing with a number of hourly employees and I didn’t know how they worked.  Did they really care about their jobs, or were they just punching a time clock?
• Then there was the plant manager.  He seemed to have an enormous amount of respect from everybody, both within the plant, and at headquarters.  But I couldn’t figure out why.  The only thing that I could see about him that was unique was an absolute absence of charisma.  “Well,” I thought.  “I’m still in the game.  But what’s his secret??”

One day as I walked through the tank farm, several of the operating technicians came running up to me.  These were the people with hands on the controls who actually ran the equipment.  “Norm!” they yelled.  “Can you help us out?”

“Sure, guys.  What have you got?”

“Somehow we got a batch of product into a tank that still had wash water from the last batch and now it’s stuck in there.  It turned into a gel.  We can’t even get the agitator to move any more.  The fuse is blown.”

“Can you get me a sample?  I’ll take it into the lab and see what I can do.”

While they worked to get a sample, I climbed up the ladder they had propped up to the open hatch of the tank.  To give you a picture of the problem we were facing.  The tank could hold 5000 gallons.  It had an agitator like a propeller sticking down almost to the bottom that was driven by a 50 horse motor on top.

The product from the plant was an innocuous liquid in its pure form.  But when it got mixed with water it turned into a gel; not a mushy gel, like Jello, rather a stiff, industrial grade gel.  It was so thick even a 50 horse motor couldn’t budge it.

The tank was double walled.  The operators had turned on high-pressure steam to the space between the walls, making the inner wall hotter than a pizza oven.  Despite the heat, the gel refused to melt.

They got me the sample and luckily my experience in R&D came in handy.  A few minutes in the plant quality control lab proved that common table salt was the answer.

I walked outside with my test tubes.  “Hey guys!  Take a look at this.”

They all came running up again.  “What did you find out, Norm?”

“I got good news and I got bad news.”

“Great!  What’s the good news, Norm?”

I showed them the test tubes with runny liquid inside.  “The good news is that salt breaks up the gel.”

“Way to go, Norm!  Wait, what’s the bad news?”

“Well, the bad news is that it’s going to take a thousand pounds of salt to break up that much gel.”

That threw cold water on their excitement.  But soon, the half-dozen operators had formed into a circle and started brain storming ideas.  Around the circle they went until one of them said, “What about all that salt in the garage from last winter?”

“Right, it’s still in there; pallets of it.  I saw it last week.” 

Then they did something that amazed me.  They started asking each other if the idea would work.

“Jim, do you think it’ll work?”

“Don’t know why not.”

“Louie, think it’s going to work?

“Yeah, why not?”

I could see where this was headed.  They were working their way around to Herman, known to be the most cynical human being on the planet.  “Herman, do you think it’ll work?”

“Wa-a-ll, I don’t know.” 

They broke into cheers.  “Yay!  Herman thinks it’ll work.”

“If Herman thinks it’ll work, it’s gotta work!”

They divided up the work.  One went to get a new fuse for the agitator.  Someone else went to get a safer ladder.  The rest formed a bucket brigade to haul salt bags from the garage.  Years later when I began to rethink my ideas about management and the role of bosses, it occurred to me that there had been no bosses present the entire time.

As the last of the bags of salt were poured into the open hatch, I figured my work here was done and started heading back to my office.  I think I felt the explosion more than I heard it.  As soon as the office building door closed behind me there was a thunderous boom.  I stopped dead, deciding I’d better get out there and find out what was happening.

As I opened the office building door, a bizarre landscape confronted me.  The concrete floor which supported the tank farm, including the 5000 gallon tank, was covered with a foot deep of gray elephant snot.  Workers were running around chaotically.  Fortunately, it turned out that no-one was hurt.

I wandered toward the mess, trying to find something to do.  At that point, everybody’s head turned transfixed toward the office building door.  The plant manager emerged.  He surveyed the scene for a second and then exclaimed, “Get the portable pump!”

That galvanized everyone to action.  All seemed to know what their role was.  They brought giant hoses to attach to the portable pump.  Somebody brought in disposal drums for the gel.  The rest of us grabbed shovels and pushed the elephant snot toward the pump, which was manned by the plant manager.

Physical work was a catalyst for me.  It allowed my brain to retreat and unravel what had happened.  That’s it!  I should have known.  While the agitator was off, the water in the tank had rested on the bottom, away from the sidewalls that were so hot. 

When the salt was added, it started to break up the gel, allowing the agitator to turn. 

The agitator mixed the water up into contact with the side walls. 

The water did what water does when exposed to extreme heat; it turned to steam, instantly occupying more than a thousand times its volume as a liquid.

‘We wanted to get that gel out of the tank,’ I thought, ‘mission accomplished’.  But I knew that I was a failure.  We could have done this safely, if I had been thinking.  ‘Now I’m going to get fired’.  It was too bad.  I was really looking forward to a career in production.

The plant manager turned the portable pump over to someone else to clean up the last of the gel.  He headed back to the office building, looking forward probably to a night of paperwork because of me.  As he walked by, I gritted my teeth.  He looked me in the eye and quietly said, “Steam explosion.” 

And he kept walking.

He didn’t fire me.