The United Steelworkers Union issued the following statement on the U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s recommendations concerning the July 19, 2009 explosion and fire at the CITGO refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas:

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board’s (CSB) recommendations only addressed the safety mitigation system and not how there are safer alkylation catalysts available, such as solid-acid catalysts, that would prevent the need for such systems. We would have liked to have heard an urgent recommendation to have a test slip stream done to compare the HF process to the solid-acid catalyst. A slip stream allows for an alternative catalyst to be run at the same time as the HF system and is affordable. The inherently safer technology is here; it just has to be used ... more