What is hydrogen sulfide?
A flammable acidic gas, colorless, mixed with air can form explosive mixtures, when open flame, high heat can cause combustion and explosion. It has a rotten egg odor at low concentrations, and a sulfuric odor at very low concentrations, and is highly toxic.
Why is hydrogen sulfide a deadly killer?
What is even more deadly about hydrogen sulfide, a deadly gas, is that even low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide can damage the human sense of smell. Instead, there is no smell at high concentrations (because high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide can paralyze the olfactory nerves). This is why it is fatal to use the nose as a means of detecting hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide can act directly on the brain, with low concentrations acting as an excitatory effect; high concentrations act as an inhibitory effect, causing coma, paralysis of the respiratory and vasomotor centers. Inhalation of high concentrations of hydrogen sulfide can cause respiratory arrest within 10 seconds, resulting in electric shock-like death.
According to incomplete statistics, since 2012, larger and above the accident, due to hydrogen sulfide poisoning caused by 18 accidents, resulting in 62 deaths; poisoning accidents totaling 33, due to hydrogen sulfide poisoning accounted for 48.6%.
Where does hydrogen sulfide come from?
Hydrogen sulfide comes from a wide range of sources, often found in oil and gas well drilling sites, natural gas processing plants, petroleum refineries, sulfur recovery plants, fine chemical companies and mines, as well as in pulp mills, sewers, and industrial laboratories. Hydrogen sulfide is mainly generated during waste liquid treatment, process production, sulfide reaction with acid, and self-heating reaction of ferrous sulfide. The poisoning is caused by the lack of risk analysis and insufficient protective measures when the personnel of the enterprise carry out non-routine operations such as restricted space, pumping and plugging of blinds, pipeline unclogging, and cleaning.
How to prevent hydrogen sulfide poisoning?
Install hydrogen sulfide gas detection alarms in the factory or workshop areas that are prone to hydrogen sulfide generation to monitor the hydrogen sulfide leakage concentration in real time. When the leakage concentration reaches the preset value, the instrument will immediately send out acoustic and visual alarm signals to remind the staff to evacuate urgently or take first-aid measures. At the same time, the gas detection alarm can also upload the alarm information to the computer terminal through the gas alarm controller, and notify the alarm to the staff through telephone, SMS, APP, and it can be operated remotely to avoid the occurrence of disaster accidents.
When entering the storage tanks, manholes and other limited space operations, the staff can wear the composite gas detector to monitor the hydrogen sulfide gas concentration in real time. Composite gas detector can simultaneously detect oxygen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, combustible gas concentration, effectively preventing explosions, poisoning accidents.
Production safety cannot be ignored! Especially in the face of hydrogen sulfide and other toxic and harmful gases, the installation of gas detection alarms, active early warning, timely research and judgment, in order to improve production safety coefficients, to protect the lives of employees from infringement!
