On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 2:59 PM, Peter Blodow <[email protected]> wrote: > once upon a time we had a strange incident of this type at my company's > radioactive labs: a fire started in a locked metal cabinet, where tools > etc. were kept, having started from an oily piece of rug for cleaning > machinery. Nobody had opened that cabinet for weeks since it contained > tools and material only needed for the half year service of those > nuclear devices (radiation sources) in the laboratory hall. We found out > that certain oil sorts can ignite by themselves, independent of > reaching their ignition point, and even if this temperature was not > reached by far. No idea of the circumstances, we guessd at catalytic > action of some sort, e.g. nickel plated surfaces (nickel acts as a > catalyst) in the vicinity or something similar. What we learned: be > careful, discard oily rugs right away as soon as they are not used any more! >
The oiled rags are famous for catching fire. The cause is exothermic oil-air reaction, which mostly affects the types of oil used in woodworking for staining and finish work (lineseed, tung, etc).Their purpose in life is polymerization when exposed to air; apparently some oils also oxidize exothermally. Now, the machine oil shouldn't do either of those things, but maybe Don had some polluted oil---although he's normally pretty by-the-book, careful guy. http://www.statefundca.com/safety/safetymeeting/SafetyMeetingArticle.aspx?ArticleID=118 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
