Western Australia – According to WA Department of Mines and Petroleum reports, two workers have been injured in an arc flash and blast incident in a West Australian underground mine. The workers, an electrician and mechanical fitter, were investigating water overflow issues at an unnamed site when the incident occurred.
During their shift, they came across a 90kW submersible pump, supplied from a 415 V motor control centre, that had faulted. The electrician found that a control relay contact had fused in the closed position and a control circuit breaker had tripped, causing the fault. The worker then replaced the control relay for the main contactor and reset the control circuit breaker. However, the electrician failed to properly secure the pump control cubicle door properly after closing it so that when he switched on the main circuit breaker it caused an instant arc flash and blast, blowing the cubicle door open.
The electrician received first degree burns to his neck, face, and ears, while the mechanical fitter also received a minor face injury.
According to a subsequent investigation the main circuit breaker suffered a phase-to-phase arcing fault, which started within the main circuit breaker terminal on the line side of the blue phase (which was shorted to earth), and then transferred to a three-phase fault. The DMP also found that the circuit was not designed to automatically disconnect the main breaker under an earth leakage or earth fault, and that the protection setting were not co-ordinated correctly, which caused the upstream breaker connected to the 415 V motor control centre to fail to operate.
It also found that the drawings did not match the actual electrical installation, “specifically the trip circuit of the motor overload protection had been bypassed, allowing the pump to operate under overload conditions”.
Read more from original source.
We are here to help you.