Veolia North America offers fuming sulfuric acid spill mitigation workshop

Fuming sulfur-based acids are essential chemicals for today’s society. If handled properly, they are relatively easy chemicals to transport and store. If not, and they are released to the environment, they can create very visible fumes (white clouds) at low concentrations. As part of Veolia North America’s Product Stewardship program for fuming sulfuric acids, the company offers periodic emergency response training on fuming acid spill mitigation at the Department of Energy (DOE) HazMat Spill Center in Mercury, NV.

The workshops are generally held every three years for over three decades. This critical training offers both classroom and hands-on emergency response training for first responders; operations personnel; health and safety staff; transportation carriers; and anyone responsible for safe sulfuric acid handling. More than 1,200 participants have completed this training since 1990 when the workshop was first held.

In the hands-on sessions, the participants experience controlled live releases of fuming acids and are taught how to mitigate the ensuing white cloud. Participants don full-acid suits with breathing air and mitigate the spill with either water spray, foam, or dry chemicals. There will be two one-week sessions held in June.

The classroom training will focus on: fuming acid properties and hazards; incident assessment; incident command system/incident management; PPE selection and use; emergency response planning; transportation containers; response options for fuming acids.

The field training will focus on: mitigation techniques for 65% oleum and chlorosulfonic acid using water spray, mid-expansion foam, and alternate techniques; neutralization and cleanup with Ansul’s “Spill-X-A” dry chemical; donning/doffing PPE; respiratory protection; decontamination.

The training is part of Veolia’s commitment to product stewardship excellence. Experience has shown that this training for Veolia personnel, customers, transporters, and local first responders has been critical in successfully responding to accidental product releases.

Veolia North America (VNA) is a subsidiary of the global Veolia Group, a world leader in environmental services. Among many other services, VNA regenerates sulfuric acid for reuse in a broad variety of industries. For more information, visit www.veolianorthamerica.com.