On 19 July 2009, at approximately 0835 hours, an equipment failure resulted causing a fire of released Butane and a potential release of Hydrogen Fluoride from a #2 Alkylation Unit at the Citgo Corpus Christi east plant. Perimeter monitoring conducted by TCEQ and Citgo did not detect any VOCs or Hydrogen Fluoride. The fire fighting and water spray suppression appear to have prevented any releases from being detectable at the site perimeter. One injury resulted from the initial fire.
On 23 July 2009 EPA perimeter air monitoring for VOCs and HF continues to reflect non-detect of HF. At 0140 hours on 23 July 2009 CITGO initiated a discharge of seawater used in fire fighting and vapor suppression operations through outfall 004, a storm water outfall. At 0200 hours on 23 July 2009 CITGO began sampling the outfall 004 at 4 hour intervals for the parameters for storm water plus pH and fluoride. CITGO estimates they are discharging at approximately 2,000 gallons per minute (gpm). TCEQ also grabbed split samples to analyze for waste water parameters in CITGO’s discharge permit. TCEQ will grab additional water samples once the next secondary containment is discharged. At the 1530 briefing CITGO identified that Sealtech, the company contracted to seal the HF leaks on the Alkylation Unit, will be entering the unit to assess what is required to secure the HF leaks. CITGO cannot estimate when the leaks will be secured until they have an estimate from Sealtech and will continue to use 4,000 gpm of seawater for vapor suppression. CITGO monitoring at the perimeter of the unit has not identified any airborne releases from the unit.
Incident response is being monitored. None planned by EPA at this time.
Continue perimeter monitoring until hydrogen fluoride leaks have been secured and coordinate with other state and federal agencies. Potentially collect additional water samples to monitor plant discharge.
There has been a non-detect of VOCs and HF from air monitoring around the perimeter of the facility. Unauthorized discharge of water containing elevated levels of flouride into the nearby ship channel is on-going.
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