[+]Enlarge Credit: Honolulu Fire Department

An electrostatic discharge between postdoctoral researcher Thea Ekins-Coward and a gas storage tank containing hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide likely caused an explosion at the University of Hawaii, Mānoa, in which Ekins-Coward lost one of her arms, according to a report by the University of California Center for Laboratory Safety (UCCLS).

Safety recommendations for working with explosive gas mixtures: ▸ Calculate the potential explosive force to determine level of protection ▸ Compose detailed and thorough standard operating procedures ▸ Conduct specialized training on highly explosive materials ▸ Use well-designed, hazard-rated equipment (intrinsically safe as a minimum rating) ▸ Electrically ground and bond equipment ▸ Use blast barriers ▸ Use engineering controls for highly explosive materials ▸ Use work practice controls to limit access ▸ Conduct outside review of procedures, equipment, and engineering controls Source: UCCLS, “Report to the University of Hawaii at Manoa on the Hydrogen/Oxygen Explosion of March 16, 2016,” part 2

Going beyond the immediate cause of the explosion, however, “the overall underlying cause of the accident was failure to recognize and control the hazards of an explosive gas mixture of hydrogen and oxygen,” the UCCLS report says.

“The message to other researchers is that they need to do a better job of educating themselves about the hazards of the materials they’re working with” and what could go wrong, says Craig A. Merlic, UCCLS executive director and a chemistry professor at UCLA. And campus safety personnel “need to have conversations with researchers and guide them to the resources that are available” to help conduct experiments safely, he adds.

Sign up for C&EN's must-read weekly newsletter Email Address * Subscribe » Contact us to opt out anytime

In the case of the UH explosion, for example, the lab passed a safety inspection in January in part by properly storing H 2 and O 2 cylinders 6 meters apart. But no one questioned storing a mixture of the gases in a 49-L steel tank designed for compressed air and not electrically grounded, the UCCLS report says. When the tank exploded, it contained 55% H 2 , 38% O 2 , and 7% CO 2 at a pressure of 8 atm. UCCLS estimated the energy of the detonation to be equivalent to 70.5 g of TNT.

Ekins-Coward was working for the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute under researcher Jian Yu. The gas mixture was used to feed bacteria to produce biofuels and bioplastics. Yu’s lab is still closed, and he and the institute have not yet determined how experiments will be set up going forward, says institute director Richard E. Rocheleau.

The explosion cost about $716,000 in infrastructure damage and $60,000 to $100,000 in equipment losses, and UCCLS was paid $88,000, says UH spokesman Dan Meisenzahl.