Safety Board says divers should not work in oxygen-poor reactors; robots may do tasks

The Dutch Safety Board (OVV) thinks that companies should stop having divers work in oxygen-poor reactors. This is regarding work done at refineries and industrial cleaning companies. Even though there are safety instructions, divers in oxygen-poor reactors face great risks. This became apparent after a fatal accident occurred on February 3, 2023.

In that accident, a man was buried under catalyst material in a reactor at the Zeeland Refinery. He could not be rescued from the reactor in time.

The board has stated that divers can fall in these circumstances or get buried, choke, or burn. Escaping this is then almost impossible. The work is “inherently unsafe,” the OVV has said.

The catalyst material inside a reactor has to be replaced periodically. Divers perform this task. That material ignites when oxygen is added, so the reactor is first filled with nitrogen.

The safety board are calling on refineries to continue to invest in innovations and come up with alternatives in order to remove catalyst material. The safety board are also pushing the sector to share their lessons and experiences with each other.

Zeeland Refinery has now stopped using divers in oxygen-poor reactors, the OVV reported.

Refinery association VEMOBIN is currently in talks with five Dutch refineries to have robots do the dangerous tasks in oxygen-poor reactors rather than divers. The organization said this in response to the report by the OVV.

“It is possible that these large reactors can be cleaned by robots so that human work is kept to a minimum in these risky circumstances. The special robots often have to be custom-made because each refinery reactor can be different in design, and they do not completely exclude human work," VEMOBIN said.