Biodiesel Accident Trend Continues In 2010

In a number of my previous blog posts, I have emphasized the disturbing trend of fires and explosions in the biodiesel and biofuel industry.

Based on the statistics, the biodiesel industry in the US is experiencing an incident every two-and-a-half months, i.e. approx. 10 weeks.

The last biodiesel incident I wrote about was in Dec. 2009 at Imperium Renewable’s facility in Seattle.

In the first seven months of 2010, I noticed two more bio-diesel incidents.

July 30, 2010: Three people were injured following a fire at Sparks biodiesel plant in Nevada (link no longer valid)
June 16, 2009: An explosion at a small scale biodisel production set-up in a garage

Biodiesel manufacturing does not appear financially attractive in the near future and I anticipate the incident rate to drop.

Reduce risks, Increase Uptime, Reduce costs

I did my first litigation support work in 2000.

Since then I have been obsessed with preventing future failures. Some of these failures can have catastrophic consequences.

Having tried various techniques, learning / unlearning “latest” paradigms, it is clear we have a long way to go!

But instead of thoughtful work, what I mostly see are platitudes and oversimplifications. No keen practical insights!

I want to change that.