Chennai: A worker died, and another was injured in an explosion at the Chennai corporation’s Bio-CNG plant in Chinnasekkadu on Saturday night. The blast occurred around 10:15 pm in the plant’s control room, located on Manali Main Road, reports The New Indian Express.
Saravana Kumar, a 30-year-old operations engineer from Namakkal, was killed in the explosion. Bhaskar, a 36-year-old driver at the facility, suffered burns to his hands and is being treated at Kilpauk Medical College and Hospital. His condition is stable, according to sources. The incident caused a traffic jam in the area for several hours as residents gathered near the plant.
Officials from the Directorate of Industrial Safety and Health inspected the site. They stated that the explosion was likely not caused by a cylinder blast, as the pressure in the cylinders remained at a normal level. “It’s unlikely an electrical short circuit or AC fault alone caused such a powerful explosion,” an official said. “Our initial findings suggest a small gas leak from a nearby plant may have entered the control room through a window. The gas could have built up inside, and a spark near the UPS in the room might have ignited it.”
The official added that because the plant’s gas vessels are in the open, any leaked gas would normally disperse. “We couldn’t detect a gas leak because there were no gas detectors in the control room,” the official explained. They emphasised that this is just a possible explanation and the investigation is ongoing.
A senior corporation official confirmed that the gas pipelines at the facility appeared to be undamaged, and there was no evidence of a gas leak. Initially, a short circuit was suspected, but the electrical department staff said the circuit breakers were working correctly. “If a short circuit caused the explosion, the whole area would have been burned, but that didn’t happen,” a corporation electrician said.
Plant staff told reporters that Saravana Kumar and Bhaskar had gone into the control room to turn off the nearby purifying plant when the explosion occurred. The blast destroyed the control room, created a hole in the compound wall, and trapped Saravana Kumar under the debris. It took over two hours to find him. His body was taken to Stanley Hospital for postmortem, according to residents.
A senior plant staff member explained that the control room regulates the purification of methane gas produced from wet waste. He noted that the injured worker reported seeing a spark, which led to the initial suspicion of an electrical short circuit.
Mahasakthi Bio-Enercon manages the facility through Spark Biogas Private Limited, under a public-private partnership. Solid wet waste from the northern part of Chennai is processed at the plant.
“I was in a shop when the blast happened. The ground shook so much that many people thought it was an earthquake,” a 60-year-old resident said.
GCC Commissioner J Kumaragurubaran announced that Ceide Consultants, a technical advisory firm, has been hired to investigate the cause of the explosion.
“The digester is fine. We will know exactly what happened after the technical consultant submits their report,” he said.
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